What's the reputation of your IT service?

‘Everyone thinks we’re slow/unresponsive (insert your own word here!)’... This is a common statement we hear from CTOs about their department, so you're not alone! 

Managing reputation is something public sector organisations, NHS and Housing place a lot of emphasis on when it comes to end users, but not enough on when it comes to managing internal reputation within organisations which is equally important. 

There aren’t many (any?) organisations where technology isn’t intrinsic to the operation of a business, most organisations rely on some sort of IT service. Whether that's in support of desktops, application systems or providing support to end users to enable them get on with their job.

Too often IT is seen as a reactive service or somewhere you go when technology isn’t working in the way that it should be. 

Seen by others as an expensive cost centre or an overhead to run the company, rather than as a key player in the delivery of the strategy and an opportunity to differentiate from the rest of your sector. 

Working with many CTOs and CIO across multiple sectors these incorrect perceptions often stem from the following areas: 

Lack of business understanding

IT departments can struggle to proactively put in business led solutions to challenges and problems they have or outcomes they are trying to achieve because of the lack of understanding of what the organisation does or are struggling with. This promotes a reactive service to change and projects become ad-hoc and not joined up, putting in place point solutions that almost never join up and give the right business outcome. Therefore having a strong capability to converse with the organisation, find out how they work, document it and relate it to what technology is available to them, available from the market can be a good starting place in piecing together this understanding.

Poor communication 

Often execs want to see outcomes. They want to see how the business is performing against set goals or expectations. When IT is seen as an overhead it's really an exec saying "I don't know how you fit into what I'm trying to do". Therefore communicating with execs on a regular basis with the right information as to how IT fits in is key. 

Showing (rather than telling) how the company objectives and IT strategy is linked is key and to do this you need to be able to access the right information from the right person. We always recommend documenting knowledge centrally so it’s accessible to everyone and you can present the right evidence for decisions. 

Cost vs value management

No budget is ever finite so managing budget to within the right tolerance, with no surprises of on year spend is key. Being able to also measure and prove return on investment from projects is key too but without the right information on costs and the benefits it's bringing to end users, it can be very difficult to do this. Having the right technology business management processes and tools in place to collect accurate data, analyse and provide insight is critical to this step.

Hands tied by 3rd party vendors

Having flexibility in your operations can be key to being able to pivot quickly to a new company direction or trend in the market that adds benefit to your organisation. Execs will want you to be able to move quickly but often we see tie-in from vendors. That means when the direction changes, it can be difficult and very costly to change and often can be frought with danger in mapping them to business processes that are largely underestimated. Building out your system landscape based on direct need in an integrated way we believe is the answer here and if you do have to buy an all encompassing, monolithic system you need to factor in the effort to maintain it and communicate the flexibility challenges you may have in the future.

Blame game

We all know about the blame game, which usually stems from a lack of understanding on the above factors  - poor IT service management, bad PR and reputation can lead to the blame game. It's unfortunately, quite a common scenario. However, this can be avoided by a number of steps (but takes time to implement and see results). 

• Step 1 - Consistently get feedback from users, however painful it is and get a list of issues together. 
• Step 2 - Communicate to the business what you’re doing to tackle these issues, keep them informed along the way.
• Step 3 - celebrate your wins and publicise them and continue to get feedback, building this into a CSI approach. Over time your end users will appreciate transparency and come to trust you.

All this drives tactical decisions rather than strategic decisions. And tactical decisions tend to drive short term results to what are ultimately long term problems. Operating strategically, proactively tends to fix these problems and yes it's easier said than done but having a central repository of information really helps you make more rounded, more strategic decisions and facilitates those conversations with execs, business users etc that over time grow your reputation and grow your role on the organisation to be a valuable part of the business