5 Questions for IT Organizations to worry about
Changes are taking shape. Some are evident, many are like undercurrents, yet not prominently visible but slowly moving the needle, like global warming. I'm talking about the changes in the industry with respect to future of IT and IT organizations. Where businesses stand today and what they need in future, how much ready are IT organizations to make it happen for them?
While today we mostly ask the questions in terms of new technologies as far as the IT organizations are concerned for their readiness, I think its going to be far more fundamental that we will need to worry about going forward since the changes happening around will make many of the existing models, methods and patterns of IT services irrelevant. Lot of this has to be do with the changing expectations of how IT will be used in future, how products and technologies in IT are going to be like and how businesses are going to structure themselves to make business happen on IT driven business operation eco-system. Needless to say, that this eco-system is not just applications but digital devices, sensors and all that you can think of. In recent past I had quite diverse conversations with organization leadership teams, especially in the context of Business value strategy. Using that as a background and seeing what else is happening around, here is what I think should be top 5 worry for the IT organizations that are providing services to their business owners.
- What is the cost that your organization is paying for your constraints? - constraints could be your service levels in terms of response time, could be quality, could be ability to resolve business challenges. Most important thing is that you as IT organization, are you aware of cost that business pays for every constraint that you bring on the table? You may not be watching but trust me, one who is paying the cheque for your services is watching it. Check it out.
- Given a chance of better ‘service provider’ today, will Business owners replace you? - Don't get surprised. Many organizations treat their internal IT organization as yet another IT services provides and pretty much deal with them like one. Organizations have kind of got into mindset of looking for better options if their internal IT organization is not able to perform upto the mark. Options are always there, its just matter of making the decision. Its all going to be 'business value' game and every one will have to earn the cheque through business value delivery and not just by 'doing things'. Serious stuff, I think.
- Will you remain relevant ‘tomorrow’ with changing patterns of technology evolution? - Changes are happening rapidly and some of them will change the game for businesses. Linking back to previous point, you as service organization, how much are you ready to enable your businesses to leverage the new technologies without reading putting much to stake in terms of risk? If you do not evolve, new technologies will make you irrelevant in terms of your servicing capabilities and point# 2 will make it even more serious.
- Are you busy solving your internal problems or are you solving business problems? - Watch out where are the leaders and managers of your IT organizations spending their time on. If they are busy sorting out their internal issues and not really providing leadership in resolving business challenges through IT capabilities, there is lot of wastage happening. Its not more affordable.
- How much can your business organization rely on you for their future bets? - Probably THE most crucial question that IT organizations need to think of. Can their businesses rely on them to capably provide support for the future business bets of the organization? Businesses are in transition and hence no one really knows how things are going to be turned out in future. But they are picking up their best bets and playing on it. If IT organizations are not able to support the future bets, that's lot to lose, big stake. So first, as IT organization, are you aware what those big business bets are for your organization and secondly, are you ready to make those bets happen from your end?
Is this scary? It should be. But again, its meant to show the good news also. While it is scary, it also means that current way of doing is not going to sustain so you have option to change the game. That's exciting part of it. You get to be part of the change and not just being part of the change but leading the change. Can you ask for more?
Comments
Completely agree with Rakesh. As Rakesh said "Is this scary?" I remember one good saying here "Courage is about doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared".
Focus on Business value add and client satisfaction is key for a service provider.
Posted by: Dhananjay Singh | March 29, 2010 8:14 AM
I have a different POV. None of these points are practical enough though theoritically "scary". For the first and second point, none of the IT vendors are doing it. Maximum is like EDS or IBM taking care of the desktop services or Virtualization of Infrastructure. If we extend this same point, then its just not IT - why can't I outsource even the business processes, anyway few of the back end operations or customer service are outsourced to BPOs but not everything. On the third point, most of the fortune 500 companies still have either AS400 or mainframes running their critical business operations so technology obsoleteness or change really does not affect a robust business. Enterprises need to adapt themselves and select what is required for them. On 4th and 5th point, every organization have their own set of problems and problems are not going to go away whether it is business or internal. It is quite debatable whether Enron collapsed because of internal or business problem! Thanks.
Posted by: Satyanveshi | October 6, 2010 11:05 PM
Satya, ofcourse, its a view-point so it can be argued eitherways. Here is what I could put on the table for the points you have raised:
--> Not sure what is your exposure and observation but I have suffcient examples based on the clients we are engaged with and conversations that I'm having with many senior executives across the globe. It is not about IT vendors, it is about the Organizations. And with cloud computing coming in the mix, these threats are actually much more real in my view.
--> I think you missed the whole point. I'm not arguing the suitability of the technology. I'm highlighting the readiness of the IT organizations to deal with rapidly emerging new technology. While AS400 and mainframes are still there, same is not true with much of the technologies that has been replaced big time by SAPs and Oracles of the world. So this argument can't be used for relevance of technology for future. If IT organizations can't keep up with the changing technology and deploy it for business gain, they don't have too a long life to enjoy relying on life of mainframes and AS400s.
--> That's your hypothesis adn belief. I do not believe in that personally. My reading of the organizational evolution clearly shows that organizations are ready to eliminiate internal obstacles increasingly more and more as their threat to survival becomes real. If IT organizations are going to take it easy thinking that problems are not going to go away and nothing really is going to happen to them, I think that's suicidal sign, I wouldn't really recommend that approach or thought process.
Its but obvious that this post is written for warning signs where problems are yet to materialize. If problems are really 'real' and happening, I would then think its already too late to act. :-)...so its okay if some of these don't sound that 'practical' based on the what we have known. This is to prepare the organizations for what has not happened and what is not known. Little different approach, I guess.
Cheers,
Rakesh
Posted by: Rakesh | October 19, 2010 8:28 AM
Thanks Rakesh, for the thoughts. Guess all of it can be summarised under two heads - 1) business relevance and 2) technology. Somewhere I can think of “Innovation” as a crucial third point to add to these. These are pertinent thoughts and have always been, in the present and past. The challenge is to imbibe change and encourage ideas…the dreams and ideas of the past are the present day realities and today’s will be tomorrow’s.
Posted by: Jones | December 1, 2010 4:46 AM
Yes Jones, philosophically speaking what you said can not be disputed, 100% agree on that. Trick really is in figuring out when is the right time when ideas of today can be be realized / materialized. Being too early and being too late, both bring its own nuances, not too encouraging very often.
Jones, thanks for stopping by.
- Rakesh
Posted by: Rakesh (Author) | December 2, 2010 10:18 AM