Enterprise IT Capability Part One: What is your IT?

Information technology is pervasive across many facets of business, from the basics of communications and collaboration through corporate, MIS to strategic platforms for execution. Innovating, managing, and executing with information technology is challenging.

In this three part blog series we want to share some of ClearPoints thoughts and experiences from working with senior teams and boards over the last few years. In particular, some of the patterns of success in terms of people, processes and technology and culture that exist in businesses that are producing great IT outcomes.

Part One: What is your IT?

More and more we come across senior management teams and boards that are not entirely sure what the IT function in their organisations is, or what IT does. What is the purpose of IT? Is it largely operational? Is it software or solution development? Is it mostly systems implementation? Is it a mixture? Often the opinion or perspective differs between the leadership members resulting in conflicting messages, strategies and inconsistent governance.

Historically its referred to as IT Strategy – with discussion and energy often centered on ‘Aligning IT with the Business’. We see things are rapidly moving on. Its not about alignment anymore, IT often is the business strategy and there are elements of vice versa. Effective businesses make the best decisions they can everyday within a clear strategic context and with effective leadership. IT is nearly exactly the same.

A clear pattern of success we see is where business leadership is aligned from board down on what sort of IT capability they have, what they need, and what they are investing in. The understanding of the role and ‘type of IT’ capability is explicit, recognised and supported.

How do organisations start to get that clarity? Technology has moved so far, so fast, and continues to accelerate. That can be a tough challenge for senior managers and directors to keep pace.

At the senior levels, it is important to answer and agree on simple IT questions. What is the role of IT in our business? To what extent does IT support “Run the Business” vs “Grow the Business”? Do we need to deliver new information based products and services? Are we relying on technology to make us more efficient, more productive? Are there strategic IT platforms on which we compete? And so on.

In answering these basic questions it starts to be come clear what elements of IT the organisation needs to be great at; and what elements may be possible to afford a more commodity view.

For example; if we are in the business of providing white-license franchises with an innovative technology software stack containing our IP – then it is likely we need to be very, very good at software product development. If we are utility meter reading business under transformation; we will likely require a competency in being very, very good at data management, analytics, and executing software projects – particularly information management projects.

Sounds simple, but the tricky subtleties are in the type of IT. Rolling out Microsoft Windows 7 is very different to rolling out Microsoft SharePoint. Building an integrated cloud solution is very different to building a traditional on-premise software stack. Leadership is key – and knowing which techniques to bring to bear depending on the type of project, is a both a competency and a success factor.

For our part, ClearPoint is into designing and building solutions for the enterprise that are fast, scalable and robust. We believe in IT talent and leadership, smart technology and strong technical discipline to deliver great results. A clear top-down understanding of what IT is and the purpose is an additional and important success factor.

In part Part Two we will follow on by sharing some thoughts on software and solution capability for the enterprise. Building tight, well engineered low-opex solutions is not easy at all. Knowing your organisations ‘type of IT’ is a good start.