I just got back from a 3-hour panel discussion on information systems that was organized by this “task force” I’m on. Big-wig IT honchos from Seattle-area companies such as Washington Mutual, Alaska Airlines, Nordstrom’s, and T-Mobile were among the panelists.
Though business is a far, far different world than higher ed (and I’m glad for that), we found commonality in that the strategic position of IT within either structure is remarkably the same. Our respective sectors may have different goals (profit vs. graduation rates, for example) but it has taken leaders in both a long time to recognize that IT has a strategic value and is not simply a background service or utility and is just a money sink.
Today, topic after topic kept coming back to, essentially, ontological discussions of the true meaning or strategic position of IT services and the fact that many CEO’s just don’t get it. Throughout my 12 years in this field, the hardest fights I’ve had to fight have been to have the work that I and my staff do be taken seriously by upper management and to be included in strategic planning discussions. Even the fact that I, as an IT professional, am on this task force was not a foregone conclusion; I had to make a case for IT representation in what is largely a discussion of business systems. Involving IT leaders in such business discussions is still not an automatic connection that even the most enlightened leaders make. Yet every panelist admitted he spends more time on business strategy than technology strategy.
Some of the other salient (and sometime contradictory) points I took away from the discussion are:
- Consider IT costs as part of the enterprise. If a business unit wants IT to spend some money on some project/product to save them x-dollars, take that money out of the unit’s future budgets to hold them to the commitment.
- Not having IT staff “embedded” in the units they support is just as bad as outsourcing the service overseas. The gulf between floors of a building can be just as wide as between continents if the service providers aren’t out there working with their clients.
- An IT shop should not consider itself “in it for themselves”; it should take direction and derive its objectives from business units. But it should also have the authority to say “no” to bad ideas.
- Change should not be driven by IT. However, IT is often in the position of a “catcher” in baseball — able to see all positions at once — and should be able to suggest changes.
- If you gain no competitive advantage in building your own application, then just buy it instead. Focus resources into areas that will give you an advantage. If your business is selling products, you don’t need to build a better payroll system than everyone else.
- An organization needs one version of “the truth” in its information systems. The data needs to be consistent and accurate above all else. Business units can still take that data and interpret it however they want, but everyone needs access to the same data.
- Things like networking, help desk, and data center operations have become commodity services and should be managed as such — centrally
- The major driver of IT costs is customer consumption of services. In other words, users will use whatever’s there; they won’t voluntarily give something up. Make sure it’s providing a necessary and cost-effective service; if not, revise or eliminate it.
