What's Wrong with IT?

by Jeff Tash

According to a recent META Group study, the majority of business units perceive their IT departments as high cost and low quality. They find it too difficult to do business with IT. What do your business colleagues think about your IT shop?

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) recently published a controversial article entitled “IT Doesn’t Matter.” Its author, Nicholas Carr, argues that IT is now mature. He feels that any new “best practice” can get quickly integrated into existing vendor-supplied products. How many of your business executives do you think share this same opinion?

The computer news media is continuously reporting that the giant sucking sound Ross Perot always talked about is really the sound of companies outsourcing their IT operations overseas to India, China, or other low-wage countries. Are you afraid your IT job is at risk?

The IT unemployment curve is an almost perfect predictor of the federal budget. Back during the dot com era, IT jobs greatly outnumbered IT job applicants. Back then, federal budgets produced record surpluses. Today, after the dot bomb, IT jobs are scarce while budget deficits soar. I say the best way to fix our economy is to begin by creating more IT jobs!

I ask you, What in the world is going on here? Has everyone gone totally nuts? IT is not about to become a commodity anytime soon. IT is still the most effective competitive weapon an enterprise can use to increase sales and improve productivity.

The “T” in IT -- “Information Technology” -- is growing faster than ever. Moore’s Law is not slowing down. It continues to grow EXPONENTIALLY. The number of transistors on a single chip doubles every 18 months. Do you remember the definition of a microprocessor? It’s where an entire CPU fits onto a single integrated circuit. Well, today, there are so many transistors on a single chip that Intel and others are building multiprocessor microprocessors. Disk storage technology is advancing even faster -- storewidth performance continues to double nearly every 12 months. Even more explosive is the growth in the performance of bandwidth which is doubling almost every 6 months. Technological change is, in fact, accelerating. The opportunities for disruptive innovation abound. Who honestly believes, though, that the large established behemoths like SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, will lead the next wave of innovation? My money’s on America’s next generation of entrepreneurs living in such places as Silicon Valley, New England, Austin, Research Triangle, or Boulder. Bet on people who have the freedom to fail.

The “T” in IT is everywhere -- in every nook and cranny of the organization. How many of today’s non-IT jobs depend almost entirely on either computing or communications? Yet, the IT department is perceived as failing to perform, let alone lead. Senior business managers -- particularly CFOs -- have formed an unbalanced view of the value of IT, believing that all you have to do is install purchased software and everything else will follow. How myopic to believe that the opportunities for gaining competitive advantage using information technology are dwindling. Such management thinking is fundamentally flawed.

The best way to change people’s opinions about IT is to deliver “value-added” services -- services perceived as valuable by the IT user community. If people everywhere -- across the enterprise -- are consumers of information technology, then help those folks become more productive. Help them become more effective. How? By providing “knowledge management” services. Help your users cope with a technological world where the pace of change is accelerating. Add value!

The quickest way to leverage your existing IT investments is by raising the knowledge level and skill sets of those people who use your IT investments. But doing so will require much better communication between IT and the other parts of the enterprise. I suggest you organize your IT information in such a way as to make it simple, quick, and easy for people to access. Provide guidance, advice, and links to pertinent resources. Explain your strategic initiatives. Add value!

IT as “cost” versus IT as “value” -- that is the issue.

How well do business executives in your company truly understand their IT investments? How well do CIOs track and report which IT investments succeed and which fail? How well are CIOs able to communicate to business managers which systems, applications, and IT products are actually being used throughout the enterprise? How well are CIOs providing adequate support to executive decision-makers regarding overlap and redundancy in IT investments?

The question was asked, what’s wrong with IT? The answer is, IT needs to be “perceived” as adding value. I recommend beginning this process by improving the way IT communicates with people -- both inside and outside of IT. Describe your technology investments using a technology portfolio. Describe, for everyone to see and understand, your IT standards, architectures, configurations, design patterns, etc. Leverage your best and brightest. Share expertise and knowledge. Increase productivity and effectiveness. Add value!