The Secret to IT Innovation? Get it out of the IT Department!
Take back control of your technology
Something I’ve been talking about for years is the phenomenon of the IT tail wagging the business dog; often the internal IT departments at large enterprises often amass an enormous amount of political control (not to mention budget and resources), and therefore often dictate to the business what can and can’t be done – rather than the other way around. We’ve often felt that the way out of this terrible state of affairs is to put IT in its proper place – that is, under the control of the business, and not the other way around.
It was refreshing, then, to read Susan Cramm’s excellent article in the Wall Street Journal last Monday titled “Put IT Where It Belongs.” Back in the early days of the PC revolution, the 80’s and early 90’s, managers and other non-IT types were empowered as never before to control their own use of technology within the larger corporation – they could install their own software, write their own reports, make progress on their business initiatives without the dreaded “IT bottleneck.”
Along with increased productivity, however, came chaos and a loss of high-level control, as well as correspondingly higher risks as individuals downloaded virus-laden software and add-ins to their PCs, transported sensitive data outside of company firewalls, and created incompatible systems with non-comparable outputs. The organizational response to that in the mid-to-late 90’s was predictable: take control of IT away from the individual, the manager, and the business unit and move it to a centralized IT bureaucracy that would ensure standards, security, and compatibility. This world of “Enterprise IT,” as Susan calls it, has now lead companies who followed this path to become “plodding and risk-averse” (sound familiar?) and we need to return control of IT back to the business and wrest it from the centralized IT bureaucracy.
From the perspective of customer intelligence, of course, this makes the most sense: the business knows what their customers want and need, and knows how to frame their questions and business needs best to create the greatest customer value. In order to get closer to the customer, the business needs to get closer to IT, not wall it off in a centralized bureaucracy that often beats to its own drummer. It’s not going to be easy: Ms. Cramm is well aware of the difficulties in getting IT to shift its responsibilities and work back to the business units where they belong (no one gives up power or control without a fight!). But the rewards for customers (and businesses) are huge: a business that is innovative, customer-aware, and responsive, leveraging the power of IT to provide greater customer value but still controlling risks and protecting customer data. Ms. Cramm calls this new era the age of “Innovative IT,” and the sooner companies embrace it, the sooner they can reap the rewards of a greater focus on the customer rather than continue to suffer the limitations of a suffocating and bureaucratic centralized IT department.
