Far be it for feeble minded me to critique HBR\u2019s SOA article entitled \u201cThen Next Revolution in Productivity,\u201d\u00a0 ((HBR June 2008, pg 73))\u00a0 but that\u2019s what I\u2019ll do anyway.\u00a0 While I\u2019m a firm believer that SOA and that we\u2019ll see high levels of SOA adoption in the upcoming years, I\u2019m skeptical that this is the next great leap in productivity.\u00a0 As always, technology is an enabler, but in and of itself does not create productivity.\u00a0 While I\u2019ll say that SOA is a significant evolution in technology, it is not the great revolution compared to the internet or even the personal computer before that for example.\u00a0 So evolution? Yes.\u00a0 Productivity gains? Yes.\u00a0 The next great leap forward?\u00a0 I think not.<\/p>\n
SOA will eventually produce enhancements for the business.\u00a0 I hope it\u2019s not like ERP where the promise of great integration and end to end processes cost millions of dollars and may never had fulfilled the promise of its full potential.\u00a0 In the current state, SOA may be so expensive to implement comprehensively (integrating across data, workflow and single end user presentations) that fully functioning SOA is not a reality for any but the largest corporations out there (if even for them).\u00a0 At some point though, price points will come down, point solutions will standardize their integration offerings, and we\u2019ll have everyone down to the mid-market with SOA.<\/p>\n
There are some great ideas around SOA however.\u00a0 The top of which is that implementing SOA with only an eye towards integration is the easy stuff, and that data integration is not actually where any significant savings are going to come from.\u00a0 The rewards are going to come from end to end processing (with the assumption that you get good user adoption).\u00a0 This comes from a couple of areas.\u00a0 First of all, the SOA platform offers the possibility of a single integrated user interface that processes workflow and other data from multiple sources in a seamless manner.\u00a0 The user experience becomes a single point of entry and processing that is completely transparent to them.\u00a0 The second is HBR\u2019s idea that organizations must focus on the end to end process itself and apply redesign projects to them prior to implementing SOA.\u00a0 Like any technology project, implementing technology over old processes is simply a duct tape over still broken material.\u00a0 Driving efficient workflow and processes are really where the future rewards will come.<\/p>\n
Most of us in HR have multiple applications from multiple vendors these days.\u00a0 We often even have multiple talent solutions from many vendors, which drives our manager end users crazy.\u00a0 Having the ability to provide a single launch point is not enough.\u00a0 We also need to have workflow notifications on that launch page letting managers know if they even need to log into one of the many applications.\u00a0 Better yet, if the data and process that needs to be completed can be brought forward into that page (now a portal I suppose) even better.<\/p>\n
SOA will certainly make our lives easier, although I\u2019m not predicting this will be in the immediate future.\u00a0 While it may not revolutionize the way we work, it will certainly allow our end users to see HR processes as less of a headache.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Far be it for feeble minded me to critique HBR\u2019s SOA article entitled \u201cThen Next Revolution in Productivity,\u201d\u00a0 ((HBR June 2008, pg 73))\u00a0 but that\u2019s what I\u2019ll do anyway.\u00a0 While I\u2019m a firm believer that SOA and that we\u2019ll see…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,2,34,41,7,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-solutions","category-hr-technology","category-implementation","category-point-solutions","category-portal","category-portal-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}