Today’s IT departments are swamped with projects, changes, fixes, updates, patches, threats, compliance audits, tickets, reports, analytic’s and licencing. Interestingly the breadth of devices and services in today’s workplace has grown and continues to grow considerably. The convergence of all information technology is still happening and isn’t due to stop or slow down anytime soon.

What I find fascinating is that information technology at its very core in my humble opinion is all about communication. We use mobiles, laptops, tables, computers to communicate everyday, Just look at the multitude of social media sites and the amount of “friends” we have today compared to 20 years ago.

As we know all hardware and software is ultimately just a set of tools to help gather, store, retrieve, maintain and manipulate data. The data whether it is Big or Small, structured or unstructured, in the case of SQL or NoSQL, needs to be constructed in a manner that makes sense to the consumer of that very data. The end goal of gathering, manipulating and consuming this data is to provide some form of insight or wisdom that leads to two possible outcomes. One of which is to take action, this can happen when the data is providing the consumer with enough meaningful information to act, to invoke change, to influence and potentially affect an outcome. The second is where the data is somewhat inconclusive, it does not help to construct a case for change. There is a third, as we know with all things in life there are grey areas, the data results may prove inconclusive but we see enough to make small changes.

Data output which constructs action, will help make investments, provide better health services, deliver shorter lead times, increase productivity, decrease waste, improve communication, invent the next break through drug, provide some valuable money making or life altering form of output that makes the human race more profitable. (profit is not all about money)

Spare a thought for the poor IT department who are no longer tasked with the provision of systems to collect and store the data, they have a much wider remit today to provide a broader range of systems and services, for instance telephony, servers, workstations, tablets, mobiles, laptops, thin clients, routers, switches, wireless printers, specialist equipment, applications, data warehouses and analytic’s. Not only are they expected to provide these services 100% of the time, they are now required to manipulate and provide some form of meaning to the collected data, all in a world of shrinking budgets and limited resources.

So what’s my point? Doesn’t it seem somewhat ironic that the very core of IT, the ability to provide and make sense of data and provide the means to communicate said data, is being left to the over stretched, under budgeted IT department and in the majority of cases with CIO’s, IT Directors and IT Managers that don’t get a voice at the Board table. They don’t get the opportunity to communicate with the Business, to align their services and systems to the business goals. It seems to me that the Board meeting seems to be the very place were decisions for actions based on the underlying data are constructed.

In most cases do Business people view IT as a cost center, one that consumes money and resource for systems and services, that when challenged don’t provide clear answers, that the Business people don’t really understand or maybe don’t want to understand what it takes to deliver the services. Please don’t get me wrong, I do think at times that IT people, myself included don’t make it easy when we communicate in techno babble and confuse our colleagues.

Are the smart companies the ones who embrace the IT department? Where the IT Department has a clear voice at the Board meeting? Are they the ones who realistically set IT budgets which are aligned to the business goals? Where IT staff know how to communicate effectively with non techies, and ultimately the Business and IT can together deliver the agreed actions and hopefully deliver successful outcomes ?

Gary Parkinson

I am a firm believer that IT should adapt to the needs of the business and contribute to its overall success, this drives me to assist our customers achieve their goals and ultimately provide business value from their investment in IT. View Gary's other posts