The Business Executive Series

Thanks to everyone who sent in a question or statement regarding the upcoming series of posts on business expectations of IT. Your input was very useful in understanding what goals and objectives IT is most frequently challenged to achieve by its business partners.

In the course of reviewing both the original challenges and emailed follow-on information, a few of things were very interesting to me.

First was the broad support for IT cost reduction as a key goal for IT. My own success in this area has caused me to take it for granted that everyone has already addressed it and that it was now a “given” for most organizations. Lesson learned.

The second was the frequent use of the “and” conjunction in the articulation of the goals by the business. The interesting part was that the business wasn’t setting another goal, but simply telling IT to accomplish the primary goal in a way that satisfies a desired constraint.

Third, and most encouraging, was the fact that IT was being asked to deliver on key business imperatives. This indicates that business execs thought of IT as a vital enabler and partner in the success of their business.

I’ve listed the major themes and the most representative statement from a business executive to illustrate it below. Naturally, there is some overlap between the themes and I’ll articulate the nuance in the IT response as appropriate.

The posts for this “Business Executive Series” will be made in the following order:

• Cost for Commodity IT Services
  “I need to make sure that we have the lowest cost alternative for commodity services.”

• Solution Delivery Responsiveness, Cost Reduction (IT Services)
  “I need IT to significantly increase IT performance (time-to-results) and reduce cost bases by at least 15%.”
   
• Operational Stability, Access to New Capabilities, Variable Cost for Services
  “I need IT to stabilize (IT) Operations and introduce leading edge IT capabilities on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

• Business Imperative, Corporate Alignment
  “I need IT to accelerate a strategic business initiative involving the new (core processing) system and align IT with our cultural values.”
   
• Business Imperative, Access to New Capabilities, Avoidance of IT Capital Expense
   “I need IT to enable short-term independence from (previous parent company); put in place a flexible mechanism to address future requirements and avoid competing for capital with critical business investments.”

• Business Imperative, Reassessment of Goals
  “I thought that we needed IT to do started off as (IT) cost savings, but that quickly changed to support for competitive business requirements.”

• IT Cost for Services, Solutions Delivery Focus
  “I want IT to have superior service/cost positioning on a long-term basis and focus critical domain knowledge and expertise on high value initiatives.”
   
• Business Imperative, New Investments
  “I need IT to merge 5 acquired companies into one, requiring all new, state-of-the-art IT systems across the board.”
   
• Shareholder Value
  “I want IT to increase shareholder value (share price as influenced by business growth and EPS growth).”
    

The series of posts will begin this Wednesday, 08/13, and continue on for the next three weeks. As always, your comments and feedback are appreciated.