IT is accustomed to being the technology hare leaving the slowcoach
tortoise of business behind. But not any longer. Increased
communication between business and IT is essential for success,
says Julia Vowler.
The "them and us" line that divides business and IT can sometimes
be regarded as unbreachable. That isn't so, of course, and one of
the best ways to ensure that there is a community of common
interest and direction is to encourage the free movement of
personnel between the two areas.
One familiar place to do this is at the top. Richard Boocock,
who took over as director of management information services at
industrial gas company Air Products earlier this year, is a new boy
to IT. A former general manager of the $5bn company's electronics
business division, supplying gases, materials and services to the
semiconductor industry, Boocock had governance over the entire
gamut of the division, from research and development, engineering
and operations, to manufacturing, sales and services.
He can't, therefore, see IT in isolation. Nor, increasingly, can
Air Products.
"We operate in more than 30 countries, with 17,000 staff,
serving customers globally," says Boocock. "We have to deliver
consistent products and services to customers. IT is very important
in achieving that.
"We are at the stage now where the development of our business
strategy is going to require IT to be built in that strategy from
the beginning, rather than the traditional view that IT can come
along later and automate a business model already being
deployed."
Bringing IT right up to the coal face - as e-business
necessitates - is an important reminder that any notions of "them
and us" are a dangerous illusion. That's something that Boocock
brings with him.
"It's an interesting feeling, being on the other side," he says.
One reason for this is that, like all managers of internal
corporate functions, Boocock now deals in "funny money", the kind
that's only spent in-house.
"In business management I was out in the marketplace with
customers spending real money," he says. "Overnight, in IT, I'm now
several steps back from real money.
"But, although IT's customers are internal, it can't afford to
lose sight of the ultimate customer." They're the ones spending
real money with Air Products.
Sometimes it can be hard to see explicitly how spending on IT
can increase corporate profits. Boocock's experience in general
management helps him to concentrate, therefore, on identifying
where and how IT contributes real value to the business.
It's a universal tendency, but "as we introduce more and more
information systems to support the activities we do and link them
to business strategy, IT tends to get larger and more complex," he
points out. Increasingly, therefore, it becomes essential "to
define IT projects and understand just where the value can be
found".
Exactly how, for example, does a desktop upgrade add to the
corporate bottom line?
Consistency in infrastructure, in data architecture, is a goal
pursued by Boocock. "I can explain to business customers in
business terms why it's important for us to have standards instead
of the latest software," he points out.
Or, conversely, Boocock feels he could explain why a "perfectly
good" system would need upgrading. Would a distribution manager
risk his operation by running trucks for which there were no longer
spare parts, poses Boocock?
IT is changing so fast that everything else looks like it's
frozen in time. IT is accustomed to being the technology hare
leaving the slowcoach tortoise of business behind. Not any longer,
warns Boocock.
"Ten or 15 years ago, the contrast between the rate of change in
IT and other industries was very stark, but the gap is closing," he
says. "The rate of business change has stepped up considerably.
Once you could sell the same product in the same way for 10 years
at a time."
Not any longer. Product life cycles are decreasing drastically
and now businesses continually need to reinvent themselves.
"The level of tension in the organisation is increasing overall.
The impact of that on IT is that IT now realises that it is going
to have to cope with changing far, far more quickly. Speed is of
the essence," says Boocock.
If the downside is that an increasing rate of business change
means an increasing rate of IT change to support it, the upside,
says Boocock, is that finally business is coming to understand the
idea of volatility, so familiar to IT, since it is now hitting them
as well. No longer, he says, does business query why IT always has
to change all the time.
"I believe it's improving the level of understanding, whereas in
the past business people would wonder why IT had to upgrade a
system they put in only three years ago," he says.
That increasing sense of communication between IT and business
is just the way it should be, argues Boocock.
"I have a foot on either side of the fence," he says. "I can be
a bit of a lubricant, a facilitator at very senior level - I can
credibly and confidently speak both languages."
IT points towards the way it will be. "In the future the
division between the IT organisation and the business organisation
will become extremely blurred - one of my personal objectives is to
move more IT people into business groups, for example," says
Boocock. "Business will become more IT literate, and IT more
business literate."
When it comes to "them and us", or black and white, Boocock is,
he says proudly, "a greyish blob".