Bevil Wood­ing

Thanks to David T, an IT con­sul­tant from Bar­ba­dos who sent in the ques­tion to Sec­ond Opin­ion that sparked to­day's col­umn on the Or­gan­is­ing IT for busi­ness suc­cess.

Mak­ing a ma­jor IT in­vest­ment is a lot like un­der­tak­ing ma­jor surgery. In both cas­es, you want to be cer­tain the pro­ce­dure is nec­es­sary and you want to be even more cer­tain of a suc­cess­ful out­come. In busi­ness, un­cer­tain­ty the last thing you want when it comes to mak­ing a crit­i­cal IT de­ci­sion. You need to be cer­tain that an IT de­ci­sion for your busi­ness is based up­on ap­pro­pri­ate facts, es­tab­lished busi­ness ob­jec­tives and clear un­der­stand­ing of rel­e­vant op­tions.

In Sec­ond Opin­ion, we in­vite you to send in your ques­tions: sec­on­dopin­ion @guardian.co.tt, for ob­jec­tive analy­sis and ad­vice.

With­out in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as IT, to­day's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment would come to a screech­ing halt. From shops tills and high-tech ma­chin­ery, to ba­sic func­tions such as voice mail, e-mail and sup­ply-chain man­age­ment, the IT de­part­ment is the op­er­a­tional nerve cen­tre of the mod­ern en­ter­prise. De­ci­sion sur­round­ing the skills com­po­si­tion, size and struc­ture the IT de­part­ment can be chal­leng­ing, even for ex­pe­ri­enced busi­ness lead­ers. Ques­tions must be ad­dressed, such as what tech­nol­o­gy streams to in­vest in, whether to out­source or man­age IT in­ter­nal­ly, and how to se­cure the right tal­ent. Then there are the dai­ly op­er­a­tional is­sues-from lost pass­words to crashed servers; find­ing, hir­ing, man­ag­ing and re­tain­ing IT tal­ent; de­liv­er­ing in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions while hold­ing down costs and stay­ing rel­e­vant-all in a rapid­ly chang­ing eco­nom­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment.

One size does not fit all

The na­ture of a busi­ness im­pacts the size, struc­ture and com­po­si­tion of an IT de­part­ment. Man­u­fac­tur­ing, re­tail, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, gov­ern­ment; size and op­er­a­tional spread; even cor­po­rate strat­e­gy and goals, all in­flu­ence an or­gan­i­sa­tion's ap­proach to IT in­vest­ment. Still, one thing holds true in every case. A well-struc­tured, well-re­sourced and well-led IT de­part­ment is a strate­gic as­set in any or­ga­ni­a­tion. Al­so note­wor­thy is that a well-or­gan­ised IT op­er­a­tion is typ­i­cal­ly an ex­ten­sion of a well-man­aged busi­ness. Here are some ba­sic guide­lines for or­gan­is­ing the IT func­tion in your busi­ness.

Struc­tur­ing your IT de­part­ment

An IT de­part­ment is typ­i­cal­ly com­prised of sev­er­al skill-sets, or­gan­ised around op­er­a­tional and strate­gic func­tions.

Op­er­a­tional IT

The op­er­a­tional IT func­tion fo­cus­es on run­ning and sup­port­ing the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of the busi­ness. It is re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that sys­tems run ef­fi­cient­ly with min­i­mal down­time. Some of the core skills nec­es­sary for an ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tional IT func­tion in­clude:

• net­work en­gi­neer­ing;

• desk­top and serv­er man­age­ment;

• ap­pli­ca­tion sup­port;

• pro­cure­ment, li­cens­ing and ven­dor man­age­ment;

• IT se­cu­ri­ty, and

• IT ser­vice man­age­ment.

IT ser­vice man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly helpdesk sup­port, is per­haps one of the most vis­i­ble com­po­nents of the op­er­a­tional IT func­tion. It is the branch of the IT de­part­ment pro­vid­ing end-users with ac­cess to tech­ni­cal sup­port.

When the term "out­sourc­ing IT" is used, par­tic­u­lar­ly by com­pa­nies in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, it usu­al­ly refers to the op­er­a­tional IT func­tion. At the right scale, it is eco­nom­i­cal­ly and tech­ni­cal­ly fea­si­ble to run re­mote help desk func­tions sim­i­lar to call cen­tres. For or­gan­i­sa­tions in small, de­vel­op­ing economies, it is not cost per se but the scarci­ty of skills, cou­pled with the speed of tech­no­log­i­cal change, that can make out­sourc­ing a com­pelling op­tion. A de­ci­sion to out­source some or all of the op­er­a­tional IT func­tions should be based on con­sid­er­a­tions such as costs, skills, ef­fi­cien­cy, se­cu­ri­ty and avail­able le­gal re­course.

Strate­gic IT

Strate­gic IT gen­er­al­ly refers to the el­e­ment with­in the IT func­tion re­spon­si­ble for long-term plan­ning. This in­cludes large scale tech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ments, busi­ness process en­gi­neer­ing and risk man­age­ment. The strate­gic IT func­tion is fo­cused on how to trans­late busi­ness vi­sion in­to busi­ness val­ue through the strate­gic de­ploy­ment of in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy. Strate­gic IT is crit­i­cal to wider busi­ness in­no­va­tion, com­pet­i­tive­ness and long-term trans­for­ma­tion.

Some of the is­sues that the strate­gic IT func­tion con­sid­ers in­clude:

• En­vi­ron­men­tal scan­ning-the im­pact of new tech­nol­o­gy on the busi­ness; what spe­cif­ic in­no­va­tions should be im­ple­ment­ed and in what time­frames;

• Mea­sure­ment and eval­u­a­tion-as­sess­ing the re­turn on IT in­vest­ments and en­sur­ing align­ment with cor­po­rate goals;

• Cor­po­rate knowl­edge man­age­ment-tech­nol­o­gy ap­pro­pri­ate­ly used to com­mu­ni­cate, re­in­force and em­bed cor­po­rate val­ues and cul­ture through­out the or­gan­i­sa­tion

• Com­pli­ance and risk man­age­ment-track­ing the wider se­cu­ri­ty and risk en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing is­sues such as com­pli­ance re­quire­ments and emerg­ing threats to busi­ness sta­bil­i­ty and con­ti­nu­ity; and

• Strate­gic IT over­sight - en­sur­ing mis­sion-crit­i­cal IT projects are prop­er­ly re­sourced and man­aged. For ex­am­ple, post-merg­er sys­tems in­te­gra­tion or new e-com­merce or e-gov­ern­ment sys­tems in­tend­ed to trans­form or­gan­i­sa­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy.

De­pend­ing on the size and na­ture of the busi­ness, some com­pa­nies di­vide strate­gic IT fur­ther in­to "tac­ti­cal IT" such as man­ag­ing out­sourcer re­la­tion­ships, sys­tem de­sign, busi­ness analy­sis and project man­age­ment and "strat­e­gy," which is fo­cused on work­ing with the high­est lev­els of lead­er­ship in cre­at­ing long-term vi­sion and strat­e­gy in which tech­nol­o­gy plays a cen­tral role.

Lead­ing your IT de­part­ment

Per­haps the most im­por­tant el­e­ment in or­gan­is­ing the IT func­tion in any busi­ness is lead­er­ship. This refers to a host of skills, such as:

• Fore­sight-hav­ing a clear sight of chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties that lie ahead not just with­in a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness, in­dus­try but even those that lie out­side of one's rou­tine line of sight;

• En­vi­sion­ing and em­pow­er­ment-the ca­pac­i­ty to ar­tic­u­late a rel­e­vant long-term vi­sion and cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment in which com­pe­tent em­ploy­ees or sub­or­di­nates are em­pow­ered to cre­ative­ly and in­no­v­a­tive­ly build to­wards it;

• Gov­er­nance and man­age­ment-the abil­i­ty to main­tain or­der, struc­ture, clar­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty with­out sac­ri­fic­ing or sti­fling cre­ativ­i­ty or de­mo­ti­vat­ing staff. At the core of good gov­er­nance lies a trans­par­ent yet ro­bust sys­tem of re­port­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

It is im­por­tant to recog­nise that per­sons with­in any or­gan­i­sa­tion's IT func­tion have a unique per­spec­tive on the or­gan­i­sa­tion. These in­di­vid­u­als rep­re­sent an im­por­tant but of­ten un­tapped source of op­er­a­tional in­no­va­tion and cor­po­rate cre­ativ­i­ty.

What­ev­er are the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of your cor­po­rate en­vi­ron­ment, these con­sid­er­a­tions and prin­ci­ples should help you or­gan­ise your IT for busi­ness suc­cess.

Bevil Wood­ing is an In­ter­net strate­gist with the US-based re­search firm, Pack­et Clear­ing House and the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing, and­Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing