itprofitability

Striving is to try to achieve the optimized result, and make the strenuous effort on IT management effectiveness and maturity.

In face of fierce competition and tough business dynamics, achieving profitability is a strategic aspect of business’s survival and thriving, especially for many struggling vertical sectors today. Information technology is in a unique position to observe broadly and explore deeply about their business and the related digital ecosystem. 

IT management should understand deeply the value chain of business, value chain of the industry segment, and value chain of the business ecosystem where it competes. To improve IT visibility as a strategic partner of the company, the balancing act of looking to increase profit while keeping a long-term strategy of the business is perhaps tricky sometimes, as it takes thought-through planning and integrated approach to leveraging multiple factors to achieve expected outcome.

Fundamentally redesign IT role and culture as a co-creator of top-line value, growth, and profitability: Profitability is key to running a successful business. Senior executives are focused on business performance and their number one metric for performance is revenue growth. More critical than ever, businesses require IT to help drive revenue and business innovation by providing innovative products and services that the business can offer to clients to grow revenue, or improve enterprise revenue through better customer loyalty.

Increasing the organization's profitability would be an important value proposition. When top business leaders recognize that IT is roughly coupled with the business strategy, and let the revenue generation/increase become the focus vs. cost savings/optimization, it is a very good sign about how the companies will deliver the business results and increase profitability. Looking at which products or services and customers are most profitable to your business can give you great insights into running a company. Information technology permeates everywhere in the organization, basically, start showing small wins in helping revenue increase and IT will get opportunities to transform from mere enabler to accelerator of the business.

Try to make organizations people-centric, also keep at the profitable trail for the long run: IT savvy organizations have a clear understanding of how people-centric approaches enhance the business model and extend profitability. High-intelligent businesses can sense and create new markets before competition; thus, making it much more sustainable than the competition. Information analysis can impact everything from how pricing is affecting close times and support calls to referral business activity triggered by high customer satisfaction, etc. Exert lots of intelligence, through data-based insight, the businesses know what they are giving the customer is both what they really want and what they are willing to pay for. For example, the dominant focus on high-value clients may principally be around the retention and penetration lever, whilst efficiency may be the focus for lower value deciles.

Nowadays, information-based intelligence touches almost every critical aspect of business from financial analysis to competitive analysis; from workforce analysis to customer sentiment analysis, etc. IT savvy organizations are able to align the business activities that have a three-way impact - Revenue, Cost and Investments at the same time by choosing an environment to compete; they inherently generate more revenue per unit cost compared to competition across every demand pattern. In certain circumstances, information based business analytics should provide a platform for predicting business consequences. Different business units would have different opinions on a business issue; the platform is the place for testing all the suggested options with predicted business consequences. The insights identified through the tests could lead to an “optimal” business decision for solving critical problems and achieving high outcomes.

The key strategic goal of an organization with high agility is the key strategic goal to improve profitability: Everything a business does is ultimately done to improve profit. Profitability as different from “profit” is an ability to run a good business. The realization of that profit may be in the short, medium or long term. It's not enough to simply say you should distribute or decentralize authority to be more "profitable." You must also answer in such a context why the path you're advocating is the better path to achieving "profitability." It requires the management to clarify strategic goals, the roadmap to implement strategy, and information technology enabler to build business capabilities, and key performance indicators to assess business results.

Cost of research and resource increase, value chain and brand value or market share are frequently observed. From top down across the organizational hierarchy, people need confidence that their actions will make a positive difference - whichever timeline they are looking at. It helps senior and mid management to build overall information management strategy, improve process effectiveness and efficiency. It also requires subject matter expertise or proficient process knowledge to get practical solutions. When that happens, if implemented correctly, the cost of operating the business reduces, more customers are attracted to your offers and profit margins increase

IT is a prudent and effective steward of the organization’s resources and strives to be a revenue contributor to the business. IT needs to learn how to build a strong brand by selling the right things to the right people for bringing high business value; striving is to try to achieve the optimized result, and make the strenuous effort on IT management effectiveness and maturity.

Posted in: Information/Data Management,IT Performance Management