Making IT Lean

The OM Perspective  ◾  37

appropriately be viewed as back office activities, even if, in practice, they are

not treated as such. For example, we might find back office workers (e.g.,

database administrators) who are interrupted by customers to perform ad

hoc requests. Here the back office is being treated like a front office with

high customer contact. This can happen when IT operations impose con-

straints on the customer interaction (e.g., by forcing them to use complex

or very restricted options on their Help Desk call tree or voicemail scripts).

Under these circumstances, the customer will often work around the front

office and go directly to the needed resources in the back office.

One of the compelling demands on IT is that its work (both fron ...