IT is in the midst of a great transformation and wrote about
this in a previous
blog, as referenced by a CIO
article and a Forrester
blog. For those of us who have been
in and around IT for the past 20 years, we’ve seen this ebb and flow of
change. New technology, growth of
service providers, decentralization and then back to centralization and cost
containment. It was desktop computing and
LANs, web services and eCommerce and now it is the cloud. This time is different though, the business
is driving and creating the new IT. There is competition and easier buying models that didn’t exist
previously. I will also state that
outsourcing is not cheaper, it is creating the change that cannot be created
from within – the new IT requirement.
In the previous post, I mentioned IT needing
to run more like the vendors they purchase technology from and marketing would
become a key component. Many think of IT
marketing as marketing great technology services and up-time within the
organization. It is just this wrong kind
of marketing that is driving the transformation for change. Your business does not care about technology up-time, the business cares about driving down cost for profitability and driving
up revenue for growth and profitability
Marketing of IT has 3 facets:
- Know your services, their cost and value
- Know your competition and their capabilities
- Know the market requirements of your customers
This is a transformation where internal IT is already late
for the dance and few possess the capability to enter the dance floor with a
perfect tango balancing technical capability and innovative intrigue. The competition knows this weaknesses and is capitalizing
on it. Technology vendors are also making
the shift as to who the new buyers of technology and services are - the
business and the service providers. The
difference between the technology vendors and IT is that the vendors are used
to identifying markets, trends, shifts and making the adjustments required to
capitalize on a market based upon the buyers and their requirements.
Know
Your Services
Assess your current landscape of services and future
services and where they fall into this simple grid. This will help you to understand business
drivers. For example: services for competitive advantage have
little care for cost or quality, it is about speed to market. In order to accomplish this, IT will require
the 
flexibility to deploy with speed and mitigate cost and negative customer
impact with controlled risk. This is
service enabling the infrastructure leveraging management technology to perform
the monitoring and controlled risk, while the technologists apply the internal
IP to the services with the right technology and right deployment options.
This will transform IT into the service managers that are
developing in the business today with the underground New IT movement. I would suggest that the model adopted by IT
in their strategy to transform would be applying focus of time and resources as
accordingly:
- 50% on services driving competitive advantage
- 30% on services for service quality and service
efficiency
- 20% on services driving out operating cost
The competition is focused on addressing the requirement of
competitive advantage in your business, this is IT's greatest weakness and the
service provider / vendors greatest ability to drive value. IT's marketing efforts must begin here in
developing the holistic strategy of technology, deployment options, cost and
value to the business.
Know the
Competition
Developing a holistic strategy will include a multi-vendor
and service provider approach. Understand internal strengths, weaknesses and the outside capabilities
to drive the highest value, lowest cost solution and deployment. This would break the traditional cycle of
change driven out of frustration to outsource, not value or cost. Outsourcing is not the lowest cost option,
but right sourcing to meet the right objectives to deploy the right solution is
IT transforming into strategic.
The competition also has weaknesses in high growth times
like these. The strength of IT is
operational focus, while both the providers and IT could benefit from a bit of
operational maturity, now is the time to illustrate operational maturity with
good management practices, processes and ability to communicate business value. The service providers are investing in the
communication, while taking a risk (controlled risk in some cases) on
management in meeting a time to market requirement. To meet the same time to market requirement
within your organization, evaluating how you leverage management technology to
automate your processes and provide the communication required for your
business, would provide both competitive advantage and allow you to focus your IP
on driving new services.
Know your
Customers
Typically when you ask IT about their customers, they
respond with their users and internal employees. Here I am speaking about knowing the
customers of your business. Why do they
select your company for your services? What do you do better than your competition? Who is the competition of your business?
Instead of working to control the environment so tightly and
throw up obstacles and barriers to change and adoption of new technology and
interactions with both the employees (Service Efficiency) and customers (Competitive
Advantage), embrace them. Understand how
and why they seek to use specific devices, technology, methods of interaction, etc.
and how to best deploy the right option. This is understanding the requirement, not necessarily mimicking each
and every device and method. Provide the
flexibility, while balancing control and risk. This is most important when evaluating customer requirements and
creating loyalty.
Think about who you prefer to do business with and why in
your personal life and bring this into your IT organization to start the
transformation revolution. While I agree
that marketing within your organization is relevant, marketing the right services
and message will drive the greatest value in your organization. This is dependent upon knowing your
customers, requirements, competition and a focus shift from technology
operators to communicating and driving revenue as service managers.
Do you know your services, competition and customers to drive your business?
Posted
May 09 2012, 10:02 AM
by
Michele Hudnall
Filed under: IT management, trends, CIO, BSM, Business Service Management, Service Providers, End-to-End Management, Business Objectives, Quality of Service, Business Services, High Availability, IT Transformation, Michele Hudnall, Data Center Solutions