Meet the spec. AND make the business effective

Eric Knorr, editor in chief at InfoWorld, recently wrote a refreshing post about barriers to success for efficient IT in enterprises (see "The real secret to IT success"). Eric's finding is that such barriers are not technological – they're human (this is a good news, isn't it?) and he had the excellent idea to ask Bob Lewis his opinion about this (see "Make IT run "In" the Business – Not "As" a Business").

Bob and Eric talk about building trust between the CIO and IT organization and the rest of the business. It's not "Dr. Philian" – it's smart business. Just an excerpt: "When IT has internal customer, its job is done when it delivers software that meets specifications, not when the business has become more effective". Sound familiar?

When running IT as a business, the risk is large that operations only ("run") is delegated to the IT department – but what about the opportunity to use IT as a vector of change and progress for the business? There is a fair chance that no one would really be in charge of it, depriving the enterprise of one of the most powerful driver to shape its future.

Charging internal customers for the software and services they receive might well improve IT efficiency by making each business (including the IT department) "feel" the cost of IT and therefore be less wasteful. But that would also create friction among teams (IT being always too expensive and never performing enough), and encourage a short term view of value based in departmental rather than enterprise efficiency. This short view must then be compensated by the implication of IT managers in the business strategy.

WAN Governance, as part of an enterprise IT governance program, offers an alternative that increases IT value to the enterprise—as an enabler to achieve strategic goals and the CIO's influence in the C-level decision making that sets the goals. CIOs can control costs more effectively while instituting network and application performance metrics to help guide strategic decision making. Instead of being isolated as an in-house vendor, IT becomes more integrated into the enterprise. Priorities are no longer defined by individual line of business managers but by a senior leadership team where everyone must collaborate from a perspective of achieving enterprise goals.

We are seeing that enterprises that employ such governance principles are not only building trust and credibility among the rest of the business: they are getting better performance and save cost. So it's not only collegial to take the "Dr. Phil" point of view – it's good financial sense. Let's meet the spec. AND make the business effective.

(Illustration: The geographer, by Vermeer – 1669 – Frankfurt am Main, Germany)