IT delivery for diversity-based companies is currently the most complex.

Few large-scale organisations have developed diversity based business models. Most organisations that purport to offer diversity seem to be constrained – often by their IT capability – to the provision of “mass customisation”. 

The front line in a true diversity based organisation needs a set of automated tools that the individual agent, facing the customer, can deploy in appropriate ways to meet a particular situation.

The ubiquitous PC equipped with standard personal productivity tools (WP, Spreadsheet, DTP, CAD, etc) has solved the problem for organisations that have limited need to share knowledge, and for whom the agents support needs can sucessfully be met by basic communications tools.

At the other extreme considerable sums of money have been spent attempting to deliver case based workflow systems. These frequently fail simply because because the procedural nature of their design and development can not accommodate the variety required to implement the organisations business strategy in the real world.

The increasing availability of web-service models with XML style links between the components, orchestrated locally by the agent may make IT delivery to such organisations more effective in the future.

The technology model best suited to these organisations is that of the thick client, where the data and context of a particular customer interaction is maintained close to the agent, while the methodology for particular steps in the process is provided by centrallly operated servers