SmartAnalytics

Limitations of organic growth are forcing companies to look at innovative ways to improve market share and profitability. Business transformation strategies are evolving more rapidly than any time in the past. For any of these transformation plans, be it: M&A, new product introduction, geographical expansion and others to succeed, the CIO office needs to play a key role. Let us analyze some perspectives with which CIO could look at these strategies and proactively work with the business.

CIO -- “I am managing ten applications, eighty five virtual machines, four networks, twenty five IT projects and three data centers. Why can’t the CFO understand what we are doing for the company?” 

In the earlier posts I have explained how three attributes namely: Impact, Effectiveness and Availability can be used to measure the value of each IT Service for a given Line of Business (LOB). Easy as it might sound, the devil is however in the detail. In real world, for each LOB the unit of measure to perceive the value of IT Service is completely different. For example in a product centric organization the Engineering division looks at IT Services as enablers to help them in timely release management of products. For Sales LOB, IT Services are enablers of sales whether it is online or offline. For the Finance team, IT Services may be all about timely management of quarterly reports and numbers.

About eight years have gone by since Nicholas Carr famously argued that “IT Doesn’t Matter”, in his often quoted article in Harvard Business Review. Countless rebuttals and affirmations have since been posted all over the cyberspace. Whether IT is a mere commodity or a strategic value to business, what cannot be escaped is a need to empirically measure it.