If IT is ever going to have a shot at closing the gap between itself and its customers then there needs to be a fundamental shift from a technological mind set to business mind set, says Kerry Evans, MD Africa at Quintica.
At the recent SMEXA event in Johannesburg, Helen Berry, business resilience consultant speaking on behalf of Quintica expanded on the reasons why it’s pivotal that IT make organisational changes.
IT needs to understand not only the way it sees itself, but the way that business sees it as well, if it is going to remain a robust industry. Today IT feels isolated and focuses solely on the semantics, which has caused distrust from business that, sees IT as a black hole devouring resources without ever engaging with other staff or management.
Business wants IT to deliver on its promises and provide reliable services that meet business’s needs. On a services level this means that when a call is logged, IT must engage with business during the process of rectifying a situation. This means that IT needs to learn not only the spoken language of its customers but also the unspoken language.
Just because a customer says that IT should get the job done as soon as possible does not mean that they don’t want to be engaged with. IT needs to provide business with updates as a part of the task is completed, IT is personal, business needs to know that IT is meeting their unique needs.
But in the same breadth, IT needs to ask itself, ‘Why am I doing this?’, ‘Why does this business exist?’ and ‘What job am I helping someone else to do by executing mine?’. By looking to the personal element of a situation, IT will automatically engage with business and business will take ownership of that change, meaning that business’s mind-set or view of IT as a waste of money, just might disintegrate.
IT needs to evolve into a service-based entity and organisational change needs to enable service management. According to Berry, IT leadership excellence will lead to employee engagement which will in turn lead to service excellence, which will result in business excellence. But if this is going to happen then IT needs to change the focus areas of its business process facilitation plan.
Key areas of IT’s business process facilitation plan should be leadership, network, skills and communication. Leadership needs to be thought of in terms of who is driving what, who is executing processes and who is delivering on change objectives. Business management needs to buy in to the changes being made by IT, this means that IT must include business at all stages of change, even if IT feels disconnected it must communicate with customers.
In terms of networking, IT needs to know that it is not an island. It must engage with its customers on social media platforms, IT brands need just as much marketing and Public Relations as any other brand. There needs to be a two way street of understanding. Outside-in, where business looks at IT and sees a clear plan, and inside-out, where IT sees services as personal and understands business’s needs.
Of course that brings in another area of focus: communication. When it comes to communication IT must take a holistic approach by engaging with all stakeholders at all levels, if people are engaged with, then they will take ownership of change and perhaps even help with project implementation.
Last but most certainly not least, IT needs to take stock of the skills it has at its disposal. In the last couple of years IT has seen an increasing drought in the number of skilled individuals at its disposal. This means that IT must shift focus by taking stock of the skills that it has versus the skills that it needs and fill in the gaps by training new employees.
Although this is a time consuming and sometimes expensive process, IT must think of it as a step towards a becoming stellar service provider.
In order to implement organisational change, IT must pull together and create a robust business implementation plan within itself and then present a united front to business. If business can see the bigger picture in black and white and without being confused by IT language it does not understand then IT has its foot in the door to forging long lasting business partnerships.