July 17, 2024
Have you ever gotten exactly what you wished for and not loved the result? Well, that’s what’s been happening for a lot of in-house IT departments. IT leaders have been trying to get non-IT people more interested in how their tools can dramatically improve their results for about as long as I can remember. They’ve finally gotten their wish. In fact, business leaders, department heads, and just about everyone else in the office are so excited about what’s possible that they’re driving more IT decisions.
In this blog, I’ll explore the good, the bad, and the…awkward about business-led IT and how to navigate the shift like a CIO would.
What Is Business-Led IT?
Up until very recently, IT personnel have been choosing which tools were used at most organizations. With business-led IT, however, departments — and even individual end-users — are more empowered to research, purchase, deploy, and even manage some IT resources on their own.
By the way, this same concept used to go by another name — shadow IT. Yes, departments using technology that worked best for them were cast in a far more nefarious light. Using your own specialized tools is hardly a good supervillain origin story, but the term is pretty revealing of how CIOs used to think about it. And, of course, some still probably do.
What’s Good About the Shift from Tech Managers to Business Driving IT Decisions?
Before we IT folks get our claws out, there are plenty of things to like about some business units trying to pick the tools that work best for them.
Business-led IT offers several potential benefits to organizations:
How About a Better User Experience?
When more departments get to use tools of their own choosing, they tend to pick ones that are simple, fast, and far less frustrating. And, of course, having some choice in the matter can drive overall workplace satisfaction even more.
Hey — Look at All This Increased Agility!
IT departments are often busy places that are constantly triaging their work weeks. Researching and procuring a new tool is probably going to come darn near last. By allowing departments to make more technology decisions on their own, they can make important changes faster.
Operational Efficiency…Now We’re Talkin’
The people who best understand where small inefficiencies really add up probably aren’t sitting in your IT department — or in the C-suite, either. Business units that can make more technology decisions will also tend to choose tools that are more aligned with their goals, workflows, and priorities.
They say a poor workman blames his tools. But when the workman picked ‘em in the first place, the blame game tends to go away.
The Challenges of Implementing Multiple-Point Solutions
Okay, now the claws can come out. There are perfectly legitimate reasons IT folks don’t like this shift — not one bit. And specialized departments and executives should definitely hear them out before chalking their reaction up to change fatigue or control issues.
What About Those Security Risks, Buddy?
You want your IT team to secure…how many tools now? The more tools you have, the more complex it is to maintain security policies, access controls, and the like. Cybersecurity keeps too many of us up at night as it is.
Oh Great! More Data Governance Hurdles!
When every department uses its own tools, you’ll have more problems with data silos and enforcing data governance policies.
Consider Some Integrations Disintegrated
A lot of cloud apps have an impressive amount of seamless integrations, but the more you add, the more likely you are to run into some pesky integration issues that your IT team now has to manage, you know, somewhere in all of their free time.
Who’s Paying for This?
Business units operating independently might unknowingly purchase overlapping tools that drive up technology costs unnecessarily.
And…Who’s Supporting All of This?
Every tool will eventually require end-user support. The more tools you add, the more training your IT department will need and the more training they’ll have to provide.
The Better Way to Align IT Solutions With Business Goals
There’s a way to make specialized departments happy and keep IT folks from adopting some serious “get off my lawn” attitudes, and that’s adopting a platform approach.
A unified platform provides a centralized foundation with built-in governance, policies, and standards that your IT department wants. It’s easier to support and secure, it also can help you maintain the consistency and integrations your business still needs to function like a well-oiled machine.
A robust platform can also provide specialized departments with a number of apps, features, and self-service tools that they will love, as well as cost-management controls that will make management just as happy.
Examples of Successful Platform Implementation
Quite a few companies have already made the switch, and last time I checked, they were doing pretty well. Here’s just a few:
- Walmart
- Netflix
- McDonald’s
- Capital One
- T-Mobile
How To Unlock the Benefits of an Integrated Technology Platform for Less
The companies I just listed probably didn’t have much of an issue adopting a platform approach because they had the budget to have their own chief information officer (CIO). Seasoned CIOs don’t exactly come cheap, and that’s fair enough when they’re frequently tasked with working small miracles.
Since the early 2010s or so, after IT outsourcing became more common, a few business technology companies also started offering what are typically called IT consulting services — where companies can also essentially rent highly specialized IT talent, making it much more affordable to access their knowledge and expertise.
Fractional CIOs (also commonly referred to as virtual CIOs) can help you accomplish a number of things, including (ahem) aligning your technology with your goals, improving employee satisfaction, and helping your organization get the best parts of business-led IT without some of the problems that can come along with it.
Click the link below to learn more about our vCIO and vCISO services!
