Sometimes in the IT department, nobody can hear you scream. If
your day feels a little like that, then take some reassurance that you are not
alone.
Yesterday I chaired a roundtable debate organized by 360°IT - the IT infrastructure event.
Around the table were IT managers from various mid-sized organisations,
including financial services firms, public sector bodies and charities - a real
cross section of the heartland of UK IT.
The aim of the meeting was to discuss the top infrastructure
challenges faced by this important sector of the IT community and for delegates
to share their experiences and hopefully learn from each others' knowledge.
Perhaps the most notable outcome of the discussion was the
agreement that, despite such varying environments and backgrounds around the
table, the challenges they all face are remarkably similar. Everyone went away
saying that, if nothing else, it was good to know they were not alone.
The debate was conducted under the Chatham House rule, so I
can't identify any of the contributors, but here's a summary of their top five
challenges and some of the comment they made - are these familiar issues to
you? Let us know what you think by commenting at the end of this blog post.
The top five, in no particular order, were:
·
How to connect IT with
the strategic priorities of the organisation
·
Communicating and
marketing IT more effectively
·
Compliance, governance,
metrics and risk management
·
Supplier relations
·
Technology is not the
problem
How to connect IT with
the strategic priorities of the organisation
One of the biggest frustrations the IT managers feel is the
difficulty of aligning IT with the key priorities of their organisation - which
must be one of the oldest chestnuts in technology management.
Most of the delegates had experience of a lack of joined-up
thinking, and the difficulty of getting a holistic, top-down approach from the
boardroom to drive IT strategy, rather than the "piecemeal" approach
identified by one contributor.
One delegate highlighted the problems caused by a major
outsourcing deal. To paraphrase his comments: "We outsourced because the
board wanted to save money and focus on our core business. But outsourcing has
removed the IT manager's ability to adequately support the business. The
outsourcing deal is driven by SLAs [service-level agreements], but they don't
take into consideration all the little things that IT used to do to help out
before the people were outsourced. In the end, most of the cost savings have had
to be spent on funding new initiatives that were not covered by the outsourcing
contract, so the net result is no savings."
Another issue came from demands to minimise capital expenditure
(capex) and fund IT through operating expenses (opex) instead. "We even
had to put our staff party on opex," said one delegate.
Another said: "A number of major corporate projects mean
there is little capex budget left for anyone. But management are loath to spend
out of revenue, so IT is just expected to adapt."
And too often, budget for new initiatives goes to "whoever
shouts the loudest" because of a lack of strategic direction for IT to be
able to make a business case."It is about getting the right balance
between tactical and strategic, and between being reactive and
responsive," said one IT manager.
Communicating and
marketing IT more effectively to the rest of the organisation
The other side of the lack of alignment between strategy and IT
is the need for the IT department to communicate better with the rest of the organisation
and the boardroom.
"IT people are not naturally good at marketing
themselves," said one delegate. Another added: "We have to articulate
things in a language the business understands."
Guest speaker Denise Plumpton, the non-executive director of the
360°IT event and a former CIO in both government and industry, highlighted an
example from one of her former roles, where she was able to demonstrate that
giving a Blackberry to sales staff allowed them to make one extra sales call
per day. The sales director, who had previously been sceptical of the
technology, translated that into the number of extra calls across the sales
force, the likely contract conversion rates, and on the back of an envelope
proved the business case for equipping his team with handheld devices - all
because the case was made in a language he understood.
Another delegate warned of the danger of IT being seen as
"the 'no' department" - always pointing out the reasons users cannot
do something, rather than how to achieve it or the implications of doing so.
"IT is seen as negative to users - they think we always say what can't be
done rather than what could be done," he said.
IT departments need to treat users as individuals, and
understand their needs and how to meet those requirements, said a delegate.
Compliance, governance,
metrics and risk management
One way for IT to be noticed is for anything associated with
regulatory compliance.
"If it's to do with compliance, it will happen," said
a delegate. "Compliance can drive the rest of the business to consider IT
more."
A risk management approach was highlighted as an effective way
to make sure the board understands the impact of an IT business case. For
example, if a business risk that could cost the company, say, one per cent of
its revenue could be eliminated by better IT, that makes a compelling argument
to proceed.
Agreeing metrics for measuring the value and success of IT was
identified as another effective tool - especially the concept of a management
dashboard of key measures - something that would also help with other
challenges mentioned above, such as the relationship between IT and the
organisation.
Supplier relations
One challenge that particularly animated our roundtable guests
was supplier relations - with everyone highlighting problems with the key
vendors they buy from. Here's a selection of comments:
"We want flexibility from our suppliers - but they all work
to SLAs."
"What we bought is not what we wanted, but it was what the
board thought we wanted."
"There is no partnership in the relationship with
suppliers."
"We want transparency from suppliers - they need to be
honest about what they can and cannot deliver."
There was complete agreement that suppliers are too focused on
products and technologies, and not enough on the real challenges that IT
managers face. "They are just not on the same wavelength," said one.
Another added: "The supplier has already won the business
with us, yet it is always trying to sell more. "
The IT managers acknowledged that they as the customer must also
take responsibility for what they want from suppliers, but many felt that
suppliers were simply trying to sell "out of the box solutions".
"What we want is value added after purchase, help to make
it work in our environment," said a delegate.
Technology is not the
problem
In the course of nearly two hours discussion at a roundtable
billed as covering IT infrastructure challenges, it was notable that technology
and products were barely mentioned.
In a group of large-company CIOs, it would be expected that
technology would rarely feature, but it was instructive to see that in an
audience of mid-sized organisations, IT managers are also noticeably less
concerned about technical issues than about business, strategy and people
matters.
"Technology is not the issue, it's about skills, training,
processes," said one delegate.
"I'm not interested in 'stuff'," said another.
"We've got the stuff, what we want is to use it better."
A similar group assembled even five years ago would, in my
experience, have spent the time discussing the relative merits of the latest
technology, or the "next big thing". But products and technologies
are now seen merely as the enabler, a tool that allows IT managers to
contribute to the success of their organisation. That will increasingly prove
to be a big step towards addressing the first two challenges highlighted above,
of better aligning IT and the business, and of IT staff talking the language of
the business.
It also sends out an important message to IT suppliers that their
customers' expectations of them are changing rapidly.
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