Saturday, March 4, 2017

Running a “Propositive” IT Organization to Improve Business Betterment and Maturity

Running a “propositive” IT organization means IT becomes more visible, approachable, and measurable.


Organizations large and small are on the journey of digital transformation, IT has the significant role to play for leading changes. However, many IT organizations are still perceived by the business partner as a support center and running as a business controller. IT seems to have a tendency to align with the slow changing parts of the organization. To reinvent IT for getting digital ready, IT needs to be ‘propositive,’ which should be always providing fresh ideas, catalyzing innovation, leading ahead of the pack and breaking the status quo. Improving IT and overall business maturity is a huge and continuous task that definitely needs to be driven by the CIO. So, IT leaders need to play multiple roles, as the business advisor, digital master, innovator, change agent, customer advocate, and hands-on IT manager for driving digital transformation effortlessly.


IT needs to be proactive, not reactive: There is always some friction between Corporate and business units. In most of the organizations, IT is setting back and waiting for the request as an order taker. To close the gap between IT and business, the connection between IT and business lies in using the common language to help the business cross that bridge to IT. IT has to be configured in a way to understand the business and set the architecture to deliver the business and market need. IT has to be a consultant and advisor to the business to maximize the revenue. Make communication enforcement in developing a trusted, working relationship with correct stakeholders. IT is being not only neatly assesses by the business but also being measured by every customer experience (both internal and external customers) the leadership of the business has with every IT delivery they experience in their own lives. The top leadership team needs to understand that IT as a function is also business related and revenue generating in the information management systems used for business decisions are always being used to make important decisions for the overall company. If the forward-looking organization is empowering the CIO in this endeavor then it is a huge boost, to improve IT effectiveness as well as the overall business maturity.


Running an innovative IT to connect both visible and invisible dots for creating the long-term business synergy: Strategy is the business signal amplifier. IT strategy is an integral component of the business strategy. The key characteristic of the IT strategy is that it should be "fused" with the business so that as the business changes course, the IT strategy is also modified. By crafting a good executable strategy, the business has the ability to filter the short-term signals of business and technology changes to identify the longer-term growth opportunities in business and technology that require significant and long-range adaptation for business success, it is to connect the unconnected to create the long-term value and synergy. It is to run an innovative IT that produces unique, non-obvious technology-based ideas which lead to solving critical business problems or positions the business to act on opportunities in the marketplace promptly. IT executives and departments also need to work out how they affect these business output measures, and what they can do to improve them using the means at their disposal. Once they do that and make a unique, valuable, independent contribution to the business outcomes that they can demonstrate in these terms, they will gain credibility and value beyond what any "provider" can deliver.


Running IT as a business capability builder for shaping differentiated business competency: Business capability is the ability that organization can provide certain products or service to serve customers or delight employees. Capability can "contain" many services, processes, and functionality in which IT as one of the most critical elements in weaving them together and building up business competency. The strategy is the direction you're heading, and capability enables strategy management.  In any case, to monitor or seek disruptive opportunities requires businesses’ transformational capability with agility to adapt to changes. There are times when IT will be the only party in the room with in-depth views of the business and technique know-how about the underlying functions and processes. So IT needs to apply such knowledge and experience to identify, sell, and promote new processes and platforms that can give business leverage in its domain and sector. This is the dimension in which IT is really almost given 'gifts' every day. The trick isn't identifying new things, but culling through the hundreds of new things, and finding those that can be used to the continuous business betterment and improve organization maturity.


Running a “propositive” IT organization means IT becomes more visible, approachable, and measurable. When the organization truly understand that IT is not just technical, but rather business oriented and people-centric, the cross-functional communication and collaboration will also become more fluent, to break down silos or status quo, and IT and business turn to be the equal partners to do more things making sense for ensuring the business as a whole achieving high-performance result .








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