Passions can run high in the business/IT/supplier ménage à trois,
writes Julia Vowler
The party's hot and there's loads of action. Scoring should be a
piece of cake. But who is the best to chat up?
At the IT Valentine's party it is the suppliers who are on the
prowl, the business units that are the prey, and the IT departments
who are left standing like wallflowers on the sidelines.
Everyone knows of the scenario where the managing director
enthuses wildly about the new system that some brilliant chappie
from Silicon Valley - "They know a thing or two about computers out
there, Bob!" - was telling him all about coming over on the
red-eye.
Everyone also knows exactly why suppliers like to target the
business managers directly - they're the new lad's equivalent of
the dumb blonde. For "Our software package could really impact your
bottom line," read "I really go for intelligent women -
honest".
The popular conception is that business users are an easy
conquest. In this scenario, the last thing the suppliers want is
the IT department butting in like the dumb blonde's elderly
chaperone.
But is this cliché fair?
It is certainly true that the very nature of IT means that there
are two customers for every product or service - the business and
the IT department. It is also true that there can be inherent
tensions between the two, especially when it is a case of a
specific business department wanting immediate, particular and
local benefits, while the IT department has to look at the fit
within the context of the company as a whole. Add a layer of
ego-based struggle for control and supremacy between rival
intra-corporate empires, and the tensions can soar.
At this point, the one with the short straw can turn out to be
the supplier, caught in the cross-fire of a political in-fight.
The business/IT/supplier triangle is certainly "something that
comes up frequently", agrees Tony Lewis, executive director of the
Computing Services and Software Association.
The association does not lay down guidelines for its members to
follow in respect of their bipartite relationships with their
customers, because, says Lewis, each company has its own selling
process, and that depends very much on what is being sold.
Suppliers of outsourcing services, for example, inevitably have
to target business users at the highest level. Outsourcing
corporate IT is a board-level decision. As a general rule, the more
strategic, rather than tactical, a solution being sold, the higher
up the chain it is pitched.
Even so, says Lewis, to defuse potential tension from the IT
department feeling that it is a passive victim of high-level
decisions, it is best to have IT representation on the board in the
first place.
Suppliers like IT on the board too.
"It's so they don't feel they have to escalate to get a sensible
decision," Lewis points out.
But he agrees that suppliers like to do business with the
business as well as with the IT department.
"Most sales people like to have contact with the signatory on
the contract - the person with the final say so," he says.
One reason suppliers like to target business users, however, is
because the IT department can sometimes be stubborn about changing
or introducing new technology for non-technical reasons, says Dave
Roberts, practice leader of IT sales training company On
Target.
But in an era where product differentiation is eroding,
suppliers need to differentiate by what they like to call adding
value, but which to the IT department can look like encroaching on
its territory. If anyone is going to provide the skill set to
maximise return on investment from a new product, it is going to be
the IT department, not overpriced supplier labour, runs this
argument.
"The IT department think they add value internally - some
believe their role is being usurped," warns Roberts.
For all that, bypassing the IT department is not on, he says.
"We don't support going around the IT department," says Roberts.
"We advise co-operation, not combativeness."
When it comes to assessing a supplier's pitch to the business,
the role of IT "should be to be sceptical, but not cynical".
In the end, of course, the only way the tug-of-love between the
business and the IT department can be defused is for the IT
department to get closer to its business departments and corporate
strategy. IT departments need to be more responsive to business
timescales, more knowledgeable about business drivers, and more
understanding of its needs and problems.
In the end IT departments that don't want a tug of love between
business units and suppliers may have to settle for a ménage à
trois.
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