From the Editor-in-Chief: Buy-in Bother

Vijay Ramachandran in the editor-in-chief of IDG Media.

Indian organizations no longer invest in technology, instead they fund business results.

Over the past half-decade, since the slowdown set in, I’ve seen managements transform how they view IT. Indian organizations no longer invest in technology, instead they fund business results.

As a consequence, the approach towards deployment is rapidly shifting from an ‘as is-transition-to-be’ model which involved selecting a product or service, customizing it and deploying the solution; to a paradigm that begins with identifying a business outcome, selecting the right product for the job, and finally adopting it in a best-practices or template model (with little or no customization) with rapid deployment.

What you are pushing at business can’t be about big data or mobility or the cloud or analytics or ERP or any other enterprise-class technology—instead it has to be about revenue growth, about customer outreach, about helping them build the right product or service rather than making the product right, and about profitable growth.

The technology is almost incidental. The strategy can’t be.

 

Let’s be honest, how often does business agree with your thoughts as opposed to their asking for your solution to a problem? I’m not suggesting that IT shouldn’t be proactive, but rather that all businesses have a certain, specific rate of absorbing innovation.

While I was casting about for a workaround, I came across a CIO of an automotive major whose approach allows business to sink their teeth into a new idea at their own pace.

First, he dedicates a portion of his budget to sandboxing and experimentation. Next, he has his team examine possible use cases that can have business impact, and develop pilots and prototypes. The team showcases the prototypes in a special zone to which they periodically invite lines of business leaders, to go over them. At the appropriate ‘click’ moment when a specific project appeals to a department, IT is then able to roll it out super quick. Not only does IT get to demonstrate its business-savvy, it also challenges the team to come up with tangible, feasible, innovative ideas. Ideas that business truly buys in to.

Wouldn’t this approach work for you? Write in and share your thoughts on delivering to today’s business ask