IT Strategies Should Align With Business

My friend Rick Brattin from Tyson Foods teaches a graduate level information technology management class for Missouri State. It is an “online,” or “distance learning” class made up primarily of people that have daily jobs in information technology.

For the past two years Rick has been kind enough to ask me to participate in a discussion forum portion of the class. Rick starts up several discussion threads, I respond, the students add questions and comments and a dialogue ensues. It is an incredibly rich learning experience for me and hopefully so for the students.

It’s not fluff. The students bring up situations and questions they are facing each day in their jobs. Their issues vary from budget challenges and technology investment decisions to struggles supporting rapid business growth, business process re-engineering and change management.

While I was responding to one of the really great questions we discussed, it occurred to me that it would be good to share with the readers of my column.

Question: “I am curious about any recurring issues that you may see in IT as businesses make the jump from being a small business to being a medium-size business?”

Although it seems a bit specific, this question gets to the heart of information technology management. Most businesses grow or change over time. The list of issues I provided in answering the question is very common in businesses of all sizes.

Maybe some of these will strike a chord with you.

Lack of effective governance or oversight of information technology is a common issue. Many times management feels they are ignorant of IT matters. Rather than making the investment to gain the knowledge needed to effectively govern the function, they tend to abdicate their responsibility for oversight.

Unfortunately, the one management tends to abdicate their responsibility to – the head of IT – may be more of a technician than a true information technology manager. Not that I have anything against technicians. They are an important part of an effective IT organization.

The problem is that technicians promoted to leadership in information technology tend to give the Peter Principle validity and can be somewhat analogous to the saying about teaching pigs to sing: “It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”

Technicians are, and would rather be, technical. When they are placed in an IT leadership role the natural result is overly focusing on having technology rather than a focus on using technology effectively in the business. In many organizations the IT area takes the approach that “It’s our job to see that everything runs, it’s their (meaning “the business”) job to see that it works.”

Which brings us to a key issue many organizations face. Information technology is disconnected from the business strategy and business decisions. With no governance structure, IT is expected to somehow just know what to do to support the business.

While IT then may understand cost and attempt to mange it well, they may not understand the cost and value structure they bring, or could bring, to the business. There is a lack of focus on business processes, leading to the business taking an expensive “brute force” approach of using extra labor hours and “work-arounds” to overcome business process and system issues.

The fall-out from this becomes an issue of the business having over-dependence on key personnel that “know how things work.” Knowledge about what the system does and doesn’t do and knowing “how to get things done” is at a premium. I call this the “run over by a truck” management problem where the loss of a key person has the potential to greatly harm business operations in the near term.

Interestingly enough, these issues can occur in businesses that have either under-bought software or over-bought software or other technology. Buying really great technology and not getting it effectively implemented is an issue far more common than you might think.

The capstone is that most businesses I encounter are spending more than they need to on technology and getting a poor return on their investment due to having some combination of these issues. 

Steve Hankins is CEO and co-founder of Accio.US, a technology company providing advisory and management services for small- to medium-sized businesses. He may be reached at [email protected].