4 Reasons Why IT Matters More Than Ever
Although it’s impossible to know for sure, Ashlee might have been the victim of an overzealous headline writer. However, Carly ” Let’s Make Everyone’s Cubicle Two Feet Shorter” Fiorina, the old chief of Hewlett Packard got it right when saying that Carr was, in fact, “dead wrong”-and everyone glomming on to that Carr-Vance sound bite is wrong, too.
Why? Consider the following four reasons.
1. Despite Outsourcing, IT Remains Important.
Just because a company chooses to outsource parts of its information technology investments to other providers doesn’t mean IT doesn’t stay relevant internally. A team still has to be a guide. Who selects these vendors? Who comes up with the jargon necessary to translate business requirements into technical mandates? Who sorts through the requests for proposals? Who monitors the market for outsourcing, keeps track of pricing and adds and removes services as necessary?
Case Study: IT Roles Shift with Move to Cloud
No team is in a better position to integrate the true value of technology across the entire business than IT. No team can better drive business results, via the profit and loss statement, across the entire business through the value created and costs reduced via smart computing.
2. Eliminate Busywork, and IT Can Create Value.
As a CIO or someone in your technology department, you well know how much time is spent reacting to situations. This application is down. Internet access is slow. It’s time to manage a desktop operating system refresh. You need to buy a new SAN appliance because you’re bringing up more virtualized servers. There’s a lot of busywork.
Imagine if, instead, your IT department could focus on writing a new point of sale system for your stores. What if you could assist your marketing department in putting out a killer mobile application for smartphones? Perhaps you could find a way to bill customers for a service you’ve never thought of. In these scenarios, IT becomes a business partner, not just a cost center. IT can now focus on creating real, true business value, not just on caring for and feeding boxes with blinking lights. That’s important. That’s game changing. And that’s entirely relevant.
3. You Wouldn’t Neglect HR or Finance, Would You?
In his article, Vance quotes Siobhan McFeeney, who leads AAA’s information systems management in Northern California, Nevada, and Utah. “Sometimes it is a harsh reality when companies realize they are not IT companies,” McFeeney says. “We are in road service and a huge insurance agency. We are not an IT company.”
One can understand this point of view, of course. There’s an old management maxim: Focus on the things only your business can do and leave the rest to another firm. However, that logic only goes so far, and it’s rooted in the concept of minimizing cost. Does AAA have a finance department, even though it’s not an accounting firm? AAA most likely has a human resources division, even though it’s not a temporary hiring business.
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