Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The Enterprises IT Ten-Roles and Beyond

IT is a conductor to integrate/optimize/orchestrate business processes. 

IT becomes so pervasive these days, exemplary proficiency in planning, building and running IT is just for openers. Even when this is the case, the IT community must close the business-IT gap to clearly articulate its contribution to business results. Here are ten IT roles in the enterprise.


  1. IT as a nervous system: IT can be both the connective tissue and nervous system to the business' blood, bone, and muscle. If you relegate IT to "computers and servers" you’re basically not engaging a core part of your body that is critical for growth. Managing computers and related hardware should be a small part of the IT world, and the rest served as process & business engineers. IT role helps pave the roads for the business to operate as they need to grow or sustain, as well as smoothing the road to make it better 
  1. IT is the value creator to provide benefits to all of the stakeholders: For the shareholders, IT improves profitability. For the customer, it cuts prices and optimize customer experience; for the staff,  it makes life easier and job fun to improve productivity.  None of these are unique to IT. The same applies to any aspect of business change; it must produce a net benefit to one or more stakeholders. IT must impact both business bottom line and top line.
  1. IT is the lubricant to a well-designed business machine: Software and hardware by themselves will never make a profit if a company’s products, people, and processes are not good and strong enough to compete in the marketplace. IT is no longer simply about infrastructure and applications, but the wide spectrum of integration of services (such as Cloud), business intelligence, connectivity to customers and suppliers, and indeed the agility to cope with an ever-changing business logic. 
  1. IT as a conductor: It helps integrate/optimize/orchestrate business processes to facilitate the business outcome. Usually through technology or data in and of itself for the paving. For the smoothing, enhancing daily life and use of systems and data for the business through process improvements, new systems, and new technologies or designs. IT role is also to be a facilitator to business processes and 'service broker' to align business strategy and goals with automated solutions. 
  1. IT as a business catalyst: IT as a business Enabler/Catalyst for any organization to achieve their business goals and toning ecosystem. Hence, it has to enable the organization by increasing profits, reducing cost and increasing value for shareholders, customers or consumers, employees, and business partners. The challenge for the IT Leader is to acquire and deploy appropriate technologies and services with the help of the available ecosystem and resources to achieve these significant objectives.
  1. IT as a change agent: Retool organizational culture and reboot collective business mindset. The Role of IT in any organization should also be attuned to the business lines and help the organization achieve its business goals, cultivate culture of innovation, also enhance risk governance process; and, foster a risk- and value-aware culture are more likely to achieve long-term success in the business, which allows it to present new dimensions constantly. However, if you want the change to happen,  you need to prove that the benefit is higher than the cost not only for short term but also for the long run. You have not yet done that satisfactorily,  re-examine your proposal and find more evidence to support it. 
  1. IT as a ‘Solutionary’: Understand how the organization works and then give solutions that will increase the functionality to lower cost and, if applicable, increase output. This means a higher profit. IT should do two things for every organization: (1) make better, faster and cheaper. (2) do profitable things for the organization otherwise, it can't do. 
  1. IT as a business data/information steward: To put it simply, assuming IT still stands for "Information Technology,the mission of IT is to get the right information to the right people at the right time. While the mission may sound simple, execution of the mission may be challenging. In many businesses, it is not enough to provide users with access to the information, they need information to be consumable, summarized, aggregated, and presented in a meaningful and usable way. This is why the business and IT need to collaborate closely so they can define how best to deliver information to those that will make effective use of it. When the corporate organization invests in information technology resources, it entrusts the IT organization with the stewardship of that considerable investment and the responsibility of providing good governance and operation of that investment. 
IT as an innovation engine: Enterprise leaders are increasingly looking to the IT function to introduce beneficial change into their business model(s) to improve strategic performance, achieve and improve operational excellence, enforce customer intelligence and to position the enterprise for future industry leadership etc., due to its cross-functional business view and its knowledge of emerging technologies. IT organizations that are able to push away the urgent for the important and drive to simplifying their IT foundation; create a comprehensive value as innovation incubator

  1.  IT also as a lever: The purpose of IT is to move the business forward. Technology and its associated methodologies and practices are parts of that leverage mechanism. Still, IT is the means to the end, not the end. IT role is critical to operational business success, but it is ever more important for business strategy. 
IT role is even going beyond above role,  to be a thought leader, a pioneer of sorts, and an energizer for the business. IT can play these roles since it changes very fast with new technologies always emerging,

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