Transforming IT from supplier to partner

The value of technology becoming even stronger in the future is unquestioned. Every day it becomes more embedded in the way we live and work and has become a primary driver of business success.

Technology only delivers competitive advantage when its power and potential is fully understood and connected to corporate ambition. In many organisations, leaders acknowledge IT is an important function, but weak collaboration between the rest of the business and IT lowers productivity and reduces business agility in seizing new market opportunities.

Business leaders’ perspective of IT:

• technology manages us rather than us managing technology — it inhibits business change
• IT is overly bureaucratic and doesn’t understand the true needs of the business.

IT leaders’ perspectives of the rest of the business:

• business isn’t IT smart and doesn’t use or understand IT systems
• the business makes impulsive requests without understanding enterprise impact.

The ‘End in Mind’ is to have ‘IT smart’ business leaders and ‘business smart’ IT leaders that work together to shape the business and IT strategy.

To change internal perceptions to seeing technology as a strategic partner, the IT function must build the capability to:

• question to understand the wider business context and uncover the real needs
• build relationships based on trust and performance that inspire mutual ownership of technology solutions and decisions
• confidently articulate to the right people in the decision-making process the linkage between technology, business initiatives and company value.

Quantic has used its experience in global and local organisations to develop a powerful capability programme that enables the IT function to move from internal provider to strategic corporate partner. Our belief that ‘a connected organisation performs better’ underpins our thinking and over the past six years, this programme has been successfully applied with IT teams of all levels, across the globe.