Ben-Johan van der Walt

• How is your presentation relevant to the theme of this year’s BBC conference: Innovation in the Fast Lane?

Most mistakes and IT project failures are due to a lack of vision and comprehension. Historically, there is a communication gap between business users and the technology implementers.

Having a solid approach for taking Business Decisions from plain English to implementation ensures that the right business problem is solved and that the taxonomy of “plainEnglish” allows organizations to reach true Business agility by making it possible to adjust rapidly to changing market conditions.

• What are your top tips for companies or employees wishing to innovate?

Make “every” aspect of business operations open for consideration. Do not limit your innovation only to IT implementations. Most times, it’s the organization that needs to change and not just the IT system.

Managing Knowledge has to be a priority. Defining a business lexicon in simple English that can be shared by all stakeholders is key and essential for managing, enhancing, and changing organizational knowledge and processes.

Realize that business decisions are not made in an orderly or systematic way. They tend to be done in isolation or at the solution implementation level, but they need to be pulled up, out, and abstracted to an organizational level.

Without structure and process for incrementally changing and deploying a consistent knowledge base opens the door to “Shadow IT” solutions vs. correcting the deficiency at the source.

Having a solid approach to managing and implementing business decisions and processes is a fundamental capability that every organization needs. It will promote automation securing your organization’s position in the fast lane.