Friday, July 21, 2017

Three Aspects of Running an Insightful IT

The companies that are working to bridge the insight gap will be the most successful business going forward.

Though nowadays data is growing exponentially and technologies have changed how we think, live and work significantly. The gaps between knowledge and insight are existing, we still live in the world with information-rich and insight poor. The insight of the situation requires in-depth understanding. Insight is in strong demand because there are so many problems large or small waiting to be solved, and a lot of challenges need to be overcome. From the management perspective, IT organization is usually the information agent of the business, it plays a crucial role in managing information lifecycle, and help the business reach a high level of Data-Information-Knowledge-Intelligence-Insight-Wisdom pyramid. Here are three aspects of running an insightful IT organization.


The various IT information can be analyzed to understand trends and will help to develop the business strategy: IT knows the business well and also has access to all sorts of data of the organization. What is needed to do is to develop a high-performing information analysis and management team to identify unknown opportunities for business or help them analyze the data and find out the reason for some business problems and solve them effectively? Information only has a value when it has been used for analyzing future trends or help to develop the business strategy.  The enabling value of information can be captured in this way and an information lifecycle developed from it. Information Management can also help with scaling and capacity planning. So, the logical scenario for running an insightful IT organization should first work to identify how information is associated with the valued tangibles of businesses; products and resources; such as information flow in processes, build acute sensing capabilities to generate business insight and foresight - anticipate as well as react, provide clues to identify growth opportunities and locate business problems, and then its own value will become readily apparent and quantifiable by association. The insightful IT can then earn commendable respect in respective business because it truly helps to run a highly intelligent and high-performance organization.


An insightful IT provides varying perceptions on how to solve thorny business problems and run a high-mature digital organization: Modern IT organizations have to build a good reputation as the problem solvers of their companies, not just to take the band-aid approach to fix the symptom, but to leverage the business insight to diagnose the root cause. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario. IT leaders need to have a strong business orientation and ability to bring the benefits of IT to solve business issues insightfully. Because IT is in a unique position to oversee the underlying business processes and organizational structure holistically. Thus, it can dive deeper to see the hidden causes and has a broader lens to understand business problems with unique insight. How you find a solution to any problem depends on your perspective to that problem, but every problem has numerous angles to take into consideration. In many circumstances, it boils down to how you view the problem from two different outlooks; from above or from below. IT can take both outlooks - strategic view and operational view insightfully, with the intention to solve the problem systematically (without causing too many other problems, or fixing the part but damaging the whole) and ensure the best result for the company’s long-term competency.


The essence of information management is to ensure the right people getting the right information to make the right decisions at the right time via the right processes: Decisions are based on information and generate information. Information and decision-making are intimately connected and interdependent. Information applies to the context and environment in which decisions are made. An insightful IT organization can process and refine information to capture knowledge, insight, and wisdom, enabling to make the right decisions at the right time for solving the right problems. When information has been used to make an informed management decision to develop the right products/services, attract new customers, enter new markets, exploit new channels or having the information to be able to conduct day to day operations which have an output value, etc, it becomes one of the most invaluable commodities of the business and the lifeblood of the digital organization. Therefore, an “I”-information-driven IT is like the “digital brain” of the business to store, process, connect and understand the information and capture insight to run a smart business.


The companies that are working to bridge the insight gap will be the most successful business going forward. They see that technology is catalyzing their business regardless of the industry segment they play in. Thus, an insightful IT organization plays a crucial role in driving business awareness, gaining contextual intelligence, sensing opportunities, predicting risks, and maximizing the digital potential of the business.

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