2013

Drivers/CSF/Barriers for Microsoft Corporation

REPORT
Arafat Ahmed Daniel Knowles Jakub Plachta Khalid Sheikh Thomas Wiberley Chan Yel

GROUP PARADIGM Coventry University 11/8/2013

INDTRODUCTION
The purpose of this report is to give a summary of drivers, critical success factors and barriers in a chosen company. We have chosen Microsoft Corporation as the company we will review when summarising the Drivers, Critical Success Factors (CFSs) and Barriers of a company. We have chosen Microsoft Corporation as they are a leading company within the IT sector. As a Blue chip market leading company we have assumed that Microsoft are forward thinking and keen to develop new technology. Technology is rapidly developing and becomes a core component of almost every area of business operation. ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) was designed and created to provide a practical framework for identifying, planning, delivering and supporting IT services to business. Drivers, CFSs and Barriers are 3 key components within the ITIL library and help companies using ITIL to achieve their goals efficiently.

DRIVERS
What is a driver? A driver is a factor or a reason for a company to change something. This may be to implement a new system or a new piece of software to match their business needs. Drivers are anything that could materially affect either a companys earnings or the price of its stock. A key business driver is something that has a major impact on the performance of a business. A range of internal and external factors can affect the performance of every business. A small number of key drivers that measure performance or progress and can be compared to defined standards such as budget or turnover are often best Drivers are specific to the company they relate to and are usually defined by senior leadership teams. Two things most companies are always keen to review are Reduce Costs and Increase Profits within Microsoft these could be considered Drivers. When the company uses their drivers this could gain them competitive advantage in the market in which they are positioned.

Drivers for Microsoft In context to Microsoft they build software that can be used by everyone from students to programmers and it is therefore imperative that the software is bug free, and customer confidence in their product is high, to do this the software code must be up to date all the time. This is ensured by publication of regular updates. Customer confidence remains high in Microsoft products and this drives increased sales. It is assumed that the continued high levels of customer confidence within Microsoft software products could be considered as a driver as it enables end user support and more refined customer service. A Further driver for Microsoft Corporation could be assumed to be the improvement of Problem Closure and user support. Problem closure is resolving the problems related to IT/ to consumers. The willingness of Microsoft to spend time, effort and money in the area of problem closure reflect their commitment to support their products and to work towards ensuring their customers are satisfied with the Microsoft products they have. A secondary driver in this area can be assumed to be the desire from Microsoft to provide exemplary customer service from IT professionals in relation to the aftercare service they provide for their products. It ensures that the costumer is satisfied.

Critical Success Factors (CSFs)

What is a CFS? Critical Success Factors can be described as the things that help a business best identify the things that really matter to them. They help a business measure how effective and successful the activities they have performed have been in relation to their achievement of their mission, objectives and goals. There are usually a limited number of critical success factors identified which are strongly related to the mission and strategic goals of a business or project.

The Microsoft corporation are advocates of using CSFs and identify what success will look like early on within most of the projects they undertake (see research paper ref below) An additional example of how Microsoft put CFSs to good use can be noted in their End to End Trust vision. This is Microsofts vision for a safer, more trusted Internet. They document that their vision can only be achieved through broad cross-industry collaboration and alignment. In the End to End Trust white paper Microsoft prepared they outlined three areas of focus which are required to realise their
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vision. Each of these key focus areas clearly document what success will look like by using a series of CSFs which they can measure themselves against in order to judge the success of their work

Barriers
What is a barrier? Barriers within IT can take various forms. Some may be physical whilst others are virtual. Barriers can be related to cost, time, resources and perception to name but a few. On occasion legal barriers can also for example prevent the transfer of data between countries. Barriers are limitations within a project or a programme which prevent progress being made. Barriers often result in workarounds or compromises being made during the delivery of a project or programme so it is important that any known barriers are clearly understood and mitigated before work or activity commences. Microsoft is faced with barriers in relation to their daily work constantly. An example of one of these barriers can be shown within their business to business sector where they face challenges and barriers in relation to network security in all sizes of business. When Microsoft launched their Lync software which allows instant messaging, virtual conferencing and telephony within businesses across an enterprise ready unified platform they initially encountered a number of issues within larger organisations. The product was re-launched after being renamed in 2003 and was all but impossible to deploy due to its complexity and the fact that it was very different to more traditional exchange deployments. Microsoft however continued to invest and further develop the Lync product and managed to overcome the barriers to the product which in the main was brand damaged due to the over complicated nature of the early releases. Through continual refinement and User testing Lync became more widely available and trusted by business and is now simplified and widely deployed within businesses. The strength of the Microsoft parent brand helped Microsoft Lync win customer confidence and via constant refinement and communications updates Lync is now seen as a reliable method of online conferencing, messaging and telephony. See an example of the communications paper published in relation to the deployment of Lync.

Bibliography
https://depts.washington.edu/oei/resources/toolsTemplates/crit_success_factors.pdf http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCg QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.microsoft.com%2Fdownload%2FF%2F6%2F8%2FF68 B3321-9F57-45CE-A1C663CEDF17801A%2FAPHSA_Microsoft_White_Paper_110912.pdf&ei=2nJ5UvX7GIXaswasyYH YDg&usg=AFQjCNF5GchXJten7PQnRWKBtu4PMgVXgQ http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/endtoendtrust/vision/default.aspx

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vmware-horizon-view-microsoft-lync-installconfigure.pdf