Is IT a Bottomless Pit?

Over the years, business leaders I have come into contact with have long struggled to understand why IT organizations can’t respond quickly to their strategic thoughts and ideas. From my perspective it comes down to a handful of challenges:

1. Executives don’t consistently hold their business leaders accountable for complete strategic plans that include IT investments in addition to traditional components like competitive factors, marketing, advertising, and staffing.


2. Business leaders (especially those new in the role) don’t think of IT as part of their overall business planning responsibility. Someone in the role recently asked me - “So what IT investments do I need to be competitive”. Of course IT has to play a key partnership role in this process but the question is best answered when market related facts are known. In this case the leader didn’t know them and was struggling to understand what to do with IT.
   
3. IT leaders often don’t know how to effectively engage their business partners. An effective partnership starts with gaining an understanding of the business challenges facing the firm. Finding out what the attributes of your business partners incentive plans is a good start. Do some leg work, check out the competition; spend time on their web sites, look at their job postings, blogs, and press releases. Most importantly, begin to think like a business leader and actively participate in strategic dialogue.

To help answer the “IT Bottomless Pit” challenge I came across a metaphor that has helped to explain how IT plans operate remarkably like a traditional supply chain. The Supply Chain Council published a high level overview of the components of supply chain and they are easily understood by both business and IT. What I found most interesting are the parallels to IT project and investment planning. The chart below tells the story.

For more in-depth information , contact Northfield Technology for a consulation.