The Role of IT is Indeed Changing: IT needs to be the key advisor as technology becomes the business

Indian IT leaders expect to invest 65% of their IT budget in delivering new services, the highest in the world. As software-driven business transformation becomes the norm, and businesses use new applications to engage their employees and customers, this trend is expected to continue, and accelerate, in the years to come. With the focus on innovation, 71% of India Inc’s top management considers IT to be fundamental to the organization’s success or very strategically important, compared to 51% in the United States.

What IT should be doing Now?

Managing the changing role of IT isn’t about control; it’s more about embracing what could become of today’s technology experts and how they can evolve into strategic business partners.

Drive better engagement with business stakeholders: IT needs to define strategic initiatives in the  context of business goals and communicate performance against strategic metrics so the business can understand IT’s value. IT should move beyond internally-focused metrics to external business metrics such as revenue and customer satisfaction, and routinely measure and report on key performance metrics in the language the business will understand.

Gain business support for the IT organization: Now that more CIOs are reporting directly to their CEOs they have the opportunity to become an equal, strategic partner who delivers clear value to the business and in return garners the budget and support needed to implement the strategy.

Build trust with the business by increasing transparency into investments and priorities: Help the business understand how you can optimize resource utilization and spend across internal and cloud service providers, make sourcing decisions based on a true understanding of cost and value and minimize budget variance and schedule uncertainty.

Identify the key roles that drive innovation and invest accordingly: IT organizations will always have to maintain existing technology investments and support end-user needs, but that shouldn’t be the primary role going forward. Search for the IT rock stars in the organization, give them time and resources to deliver new products and services, and truly innovate. As you shift more of your energy and focus to new services, over time your budget balance will shift from maintenance to innovation.

Educate the business on disruptive trends: IT organizations should understand how new technologies can drive business success. Stay on top of the latest technologies and invest in the required skills, talent and training. Don’t wait to be asked by the business about cloud computing, Big Data or mobility, for instance; look for ways to collaborate with the business in developing a proactive plan to leverage them.

Evolve IT from support to strategist: Today IT is the “problem fixer”; IT is the go-to for customer complaints; and IT maintains systems. But tomorrow IT needs to be the strategy expert. IT needs to be the key advisor as technology becomes the business.

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CRM strategy to create a winning customer experience: A telco can gain real time feedback and deliver tailored offers to customers by empowering customers through self-help apps

Customer service is re-emerging as the core business strategy to create a winning customer experience. Great service needs to be consistent across all mobile devices, as well as social and digital media channels. It also needs to be personalized and consistent with marketing efforts by helping in retention and growth through enhanced customer experience and engagement. It also explains the current market scenarios and challenges that need to be addressed in order to place a successful strategy for customer relationship management (CRM) in place.

 Self Service applications allow customers to manage their mobile account transactions real time from their individual phones. Customers can even raise their own trouble ticket or request and provide MNOs with real time customer feedback. A study estimates that 80 percent of calls to call centers are related to simple queries.  By empowering customers through such self-help apps benefits the customers and helps the operator to reduce customer care cost. It also holds the potential for an augmented customer engagement, provided it is a personalized and secure interaction. By developing a rich interaction suite through the mobile self-service app, a telco can gain real time feedback and deliver tailored offers to customers. Talking about the customers, with a well integrated self service app they can resolve their issues within one session without having to wait for a 24 hour process time line.

Africa, Asia and Latin America emerged as the untapped markets for such apps. In such growing economies, MNOs can deepen relationship with customers by providing them a tool like self-service apps. In a fiercely competitive market, low engagement level contributes to high customer churn.

 Self-service apps provide MNOs a branded presence on the customer’s device, and a channel to have a continuous personalized dialog with customers. A positive customer experience via a self-service app generates repeat usage, loyalty and advocacy.

In terms of creating new application, the problem especially arises in mobile first economies where mobile device models are attached to pre- and postpaid contracts on 2G and 3G networks which make it difficult for developing and embedding self service apps on handsets. On the other hand, emerging economies which have poor literacy rates present a challenge in adoption of adoption of such apps. Here, it is important to create a simple intuitive user interface (UI) with one touch options and minimum number of menus and click through pages. MNOs will have to find ways to overcome such issues in order to create opportunities for advanced and rich interactions.

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Four sourcing strategies from automakers, companies will be better able to foster innovation and efficiency in their IT outsourcing

As many companies have discovered, much to their dismay, IT outsourcing doesn't always go as planned. In case after case, the lower costs, better service quality, and greater agility everyone was expecting turn out to be elusive. Looking for lessons in failed engagements has become a virtual pastime for the IT sector, yet the disappointments continue. Perhaps it is time to draw insights on outsourcing from another sector -- specifically from one that does a better job of it, the automotive industry.

By following four sourcing strategies from automakers, companies will be better able to foster innovation and efficiency in their IT outsourcing. Just as important, it will spur companies to manage IT as a core component of their business. 

1. Retain expertise: Rebuilding IT expertise will take time, so companies should get on their way. They can decide if any outsourced services could be taken back in-house, and add technical experts to their procurement teams. They can prioritize emerging key technologies, such as virtualization and the cloud, and gradually build skills by hiring or developing the necessary talent. Finally, sourcing and vendor management must become integrated parts of an IT career path and not treated as an end station, as is sometimes the case.

2. Pay attention to processes that provide an edge: In IT, all outsourced processes -- whether a "differentiator" or a more commoditized task -- tend to be handled in the similar, hands-off fashion, with the company relying on the vendor to get things right. The automotive industry approach would let companies' in-house IT teams focus their efforts where the payoff would be greatest. For instance, at a logistics company, one differentiating process might be the routing of trucks. The IT application that supports that routing should be flagged for special treatment, such as stepped-up collaboration or supervision. For here, improvements aren't just beneficial, they can bring competitive advantage. 

3. Challenge suppliers to deliver improvements: In many engagements, ambiguous contracts, hands-off management, and difficulty switching providers (or a reluctance to do so) give vendors little reason to focus on improvements. To get closer to the automobile model, IT organizations should move to standardized environments when possible, particularly in the cloud. They should also consider the "champion-challenger" model, where one provider does the bulk of the work, but another does some of it (and can step in further if necessary). Another approach is to assign one provider the execution of a task, but give another a quality control role, making sure the work gets done. 

4. Emphasize transparency: IT organizations, which typically pay for services on a volume-centric measure -- be it MIPS, terabytes, or number of transactions -- rarely have such an inside view. To gain such a view, they could devote procurement staff to better understanding costs, as well as promote more dialogue and information sharing with providers. As procurement staff members develop more expertise, they'll be better able to evaluate the pricing and quality of the services they are sourcing.

There is a reason IT organizations embrace outsourcing: It can really deliver benefits. But to see them, companies need to get back in the driver's seat, creating the right incentives, and balance, in their sourcing relationships. By embracing these four lessons from the auto industry, they can do just that -- and enjoy a smoother road ahead.

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