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IT leaders should think about business first, technology second, focusing on generating business value and customer satisfaction.

Organization has a set of capabilities that enable it to achieve successful outcomes, whether financial, brand, or double bottom line. IT in the high mature organizations progressively see themselves as an integral enabler of business advances, a value creator, discover new areas which contribute to the business growth, improve business efficiency by automating certain tasks and optimizing cost. 

IT leaders continue to evolve rapidly in the midst of overwhelming information growth and accelerating changes in technology. In many companies though, IT-business gaps are the reality. The business crowd wrongly equates IT solutions with concerns of expensive technical difficulties and the IT crowd builds more out of its own know-how than the needs of the business. To keep IT relevant, the foresight is required to truly understand the implications of fast-growth of information and emerging technology, for exploring the business opportunities or preventing risks. IT leaders should think about business first, technology second, focusing on generating business value and customer satisfaction.

What efficiency and revenue generation opportunities are supported/delivered by IT? IT is in a unique position to oversee varying business functions broadly and explore their business and the related digital ecosystem. In high mature companies, IT understands deeply the value chain of business. IT is not only the business strategy enabler, but a value creator. When they are recognizing that IT is roughly coupled with the business strategy, it is a very good sign about how the companies will deliver the business results and increase profitability.

In forward-looking companies, the IT enabled innovation approach focuses on commercially relevant compounds innovation management, which are driven by clear strategic goals, integral and interdisciplinary process management in which IT is the linchpin. Senior executives are focused on business performance and their number one metric for performance is revenue growth. They redesign IT role as a co-creator of top-line value, growth, and profitability. They take a balancing act of looking to increase profit while improving operational efficiency and excellence.

How does IT impact customer retention? IT has two sets of customers: external end customers and employees as internal customers. Customer-centric organizations are moving up from doing customer service to managing the customer experience, and ultimately driving customer success. Forcing customers through a commodity channel when it requires an intimate approach will never achieve high levels of satisfaction. IT plays a significant role in revitalizing business models, digitizing touch points of customer experience and personalizing products or services.

IT needs to provide powerful tools to their internal customers – employees, improving their productivity and creativity. Show the customer that you are making the significant investment to deliver personalized products, services, or solutions which more closely meet their needs. To run IT as the value generator, businesses require IT to help drive revenue through better customer loyalty. Either engaging employees or delighting end customers, deploy a range of technologies that focus on improving the customer's experience and building business reputation and brand.

How should IT leaders investigate different paths to innovate and build differentiated competency: Information Technology is one of the tools the CIO uses to help move the business in the direction of meeting its strategic goals, derives the most value out of the technology to investing in the future of the business. The CIO must understand the core business in order to be a good team member and help the organization succeed via building different business capability and optimizing cost accordingly. IT leaders have to be hand-in-glove with the business executives to map out the vision, know how to play a bridge between what the business understands and what technology understands. They should ask insightful questions about the potential value of emerging new technologies; as well as how difficult it would be to translate the promise of technology to a strategic and competitive advantage for the company.

IT management should provide comprehensive business oversight, make the objective assessment of underlying business functions and processes, facilitate cross functional communication with business executives to co-solve business problems innovatively. Put the framework in place to map the strategic objectives into IT enabled business capabilities, and then determine what technology investments will accelerate the changes. To develop the best practices and amplify innovation impact, intelligent CIOs should talk about the strategic use of technology to meet these concerns. Sometimes when one business area has a new product that can be used by another, IT can connect the wider dots to come up with innovative solutions and scale up at the entire organization scope.

If traditional IT organization is the survival model to keep the lights on only, modern IT organizations strive to be a revenue contributor to the business by taking a holistic approach and structural practices to improve organizational responsiveness, adaptability, information-savvy speed, innovation, etc. Being striving is to try to achieve the optimized result, and make the strenuous effort on IT management effectiveness and maturity.

Posted in: IT Innovation,IT Transformation,Leading by Questioning