Almost every business and technology leader we have interviewed about digital transformation has mentioned the need for smarter collaboration between IT and functions for better business outcomes. In an era where business is dominated by data and security considerations and transformed by the pandemic, purposeful engagement for smart technology investments is mission critical. How can you finally make this a reality in your business?
Goodbye, Legacy
Readers from the industrial era will remember when the ‘IT department’ was the all-powerful, all-knowing gateway to the promised land of technology enablement. Millions of dollars and what seemed like millions of years were invested in developing what we today refer to ‘legacy’ ERP or HR or Accounting systems. Business leaders tended to ‘leave IT to IT’, only to discover that the delivered solutions did not go beyond mere transaction management systems. When left to IT, systems got built for stability and control rather than the agility and speed business leaders need. Coupled with poor adoption and user experience, tech ROI remained a grey zone.
We Are All Technology Firms Today
In the digital era, whether you are a bookstore or an airline, you also must be a technology company. Everyone understands today that IT is ‘too important to be left to IT’. With Boards pushing digital transformation and an evident direct connect between technology, revenue and profitability, technology investments are more strategic than ever. But instead of closer collaboration, we see more disengagement between IT and functional leaders!
The explosion of the SaaS vendor landscape gave business leaders freedom, speed, scale, low prices, and low dependence on IT teams. As much as SaaS opened a whole new world, it also opened a new can of worms. Without much IT involvement, the ‘legacy platforms’ of yore were quickly replaced by ‘Frankenstacks’, run by shadow IT teams set up directly by functional leaders.
Aside from the cost (all those unused monthly subscriptions and freemium upgrades can really add up) and the inefficiency – different teams using different software to do the same thing, causing version and access issues; there are also the very real challenges around security and ownership of data (especially on the cloud), as well as lack of integration across different tools and platforms, perhaps creating more silos than before.
The Data Era Demands Purposeful Engagement Between Business and IT
In the last several years, something larger than the sum of its parts has shifted again. If I had to label it, I would say it is the realization that digital is table stakes, and data and security are central to all businesses today.
Strategic, regulatory and credibility considerations have brought data and security to the front. Both have the power to disrupt business models, create new value, or send perfectly established businesses crashing into oblivion. Because both depend on complex technical and functional expertise, the only way to win on both fronts is if business and IT engage purposefully to make the right technology investments.
But despite the intent, differences in language, priorities, metrics, and culture make that a challenge. On a lighter note, one could even argue that technology sellers understand the multiple ‘personas’ in prospect organizations better than buying committee members understand each other!
Addressing 3 key areas could help build purposeful engagement for smarter technology investments in today’s complex, competitive environment:
1. Strategic Engagement
The familiar narrative of ‘IT wants stability/security – business wants speed/agility’ needs to change to ‘what does our business need’ in the immediate and longer term? What technology roadmap do we need to build to achieve those outcomes? Which are the big, strategic investments and what are the smaller, tactical buys? Which core technologies should be centralized (security, collaboration tools and data management platforms) and which ones can be function specific (martech tools, for example)? What tools do we need to build, and what can we buy? What tools can be hosted on the cloud? What combination of enterprise-wide platforms and best-in-class point solutions works best for us? What degree of integration is needed across various tools and platforms? Which technology decisions can be centralized and decentralized to build optimal stacks? Who can evaluate the impact on security and compliance for each investment? Answering these questions based on business goals will help define the strategic areas where purposeful engagement is truly needed, rather than imposing a generic need for collaboration, or worse, belatedly dealing with confrontation.
2. Performance Management
Output may be function specific, but outcomes have organization wide impact. Unless both IT and business are accountable to the same business outcomes, performance and ROI gaps will persist. For example, IT may consider zero down time as performance, whereas business will consider profitability – in fact everyone on the selection team needs to be accountable for the same metrics, including adoption and ROI. Creating a clearly worded glossary of terms ensures everyone is defining key metrics in the same way and there is no ambiguity. When it comes to performance, a purposeful engagement approach brings everyone on the same page and replaces blame with resolution and improvement.
3. Culture and Communication
As long ago as 2007, an HBR study on collaboration found an interesting paradox: the four characteristics that determined the success of cross-functional teams – large, diverse, virtual and composed of highly skilled experts – were the same 4 characteristics that made it hard for teams to get anything done. As they say in the report, ‘the qualities required for success are the same qualities that undermine success’. Purposeful engagement would focus on right-sizing strategic cross-functional teams, focusing on people and processes as much as the solution. Evangelists across all teams and levels are key, but transparent upstream, downstream, and lateral communication needs to continue in perpetuity – not just in the pre- or post-deployment stages. While everyone needs to focus on the same outcomes, it is important to sensitize both teams on what success means. For example, IT needs to understand why speed and agility are important to business, and business needs to understand the risks of security vulnerabilities and the toll it takes on IT resources.
To Purposeful Engagement!
Purposeful engagement ensures optimal and sustainable technology investments for the business. This approach is different because it focuses on what is important and strategic to the business, versus a generic need for collaboration; allows for dynamic leadership (between IT and business) based on the use-case and complexity; and balances the need to minimize the operational load on DevOps, SecOps and IT Ops while maximizing adoption and self-reliance by users.
As we hurtle into the data-powered virtual era, it will be fascinating to track how the new reality of distributed, remote workforces, virtual workplaces, and omni-channel customers will impact purposeful engagement between business and IT, for ever-smarter technology investments.