Kathy Gibson at the IDC CIO Summit, Sandton – What is the bottom line; and what can CIOs do to address the changes in the relationship between IT and the business?
Lise Hagen, research manager: software and IT service at IDC South Africa, points out that the disruption IT is experiencing now could be an opportunity for creativity and innovation.
“It’s going to get more challenging,” she says.
Traditionally the IT function has been centralised, because it is capex-intensive and very technical.
In the future, though, IDC sees the IT function moving to a federated or hybrid model, with business strategy being the centre of the universe.
“Stop, take a step back and assess where you are going,” she advises. “And what do you need to do with your enterprise architecture to make this happen?”
Hagen says CIOS also need to consider data privacy and management; and then look to vendor and sourcing management. IT can play an important role in a federated structure by ensuring the buying and sourcing is centralised and managed.
Security, equally, needs to be centrally implemented and managed.
Service management should be assessed to ensure that it is effective; and is helping end users to use technology to its full potential.
IT strategy needs to be a centralised function; and it needs to be inextricably linked to the company’s business strategy.
So what can CIOs do right now?
Hagen suggests they assess the current organisational model to understand where in the organisation IT assets are currently sitting.
The next step is to reflect no sanction exceptions, review what has gone well and what needs to be improved.
Following from that, CIOs can craft a plan to evolve the exceptions – or, if there are not any, situations where exceptions were requested but never authorised – into sanctions, distributed, federated IT operations.
Within the next one to two years, IT should have created and fund a plan to define, evolve and implement the required governance architecture, considering which business practices are in place or are required, what human capital and leadership skills are needed, and whether this will be developed internally or externally.
The first phase of the redefinition of the IT organisation internally can be launched, with IT declaring objective, presenting the plan and taking a lead.
Ultimately, the link of the business will be to their ability to evolve IT capabilities.
“The technology will then underlie virtually everything in the business,” Hagen says.
“The IT organisation will evolve from a centralised, monolithic model to a federated hybrid model that provides governance and oversight.
“It’s not a question of it – but of when.”