What will be the top five issues on the IT director's agenda
this year?
A question of survival
Nowadays, unfortunately the question that must remain high on the
IT director's agenda is "will I survive the next 12 months?" The
survival rate is short and getting shorter.
Security: ensuring a balance between good security
and customer friendliness so the customer does not become
frustrated.
Business opportunities: ensure you have the right
dialogue with your users to exploit opportunities that technology
presents and, equally, listen for needs for which a technical
solution may need to be found.
Supplier relationships: build sensible two-sided
relationships. With strategic suppliers get into real
confidentiality agreements so that you can discuss future needs and
they their future offerings so as to speed up the time to market
when the opportunity arises.
Continuity: ensure a balance between continuing
with existing systems, almost certainly running at low cost and
virtually error free, against the functionality offered by new
products.
Robin Laidlaw, president, Computer Weekly 500 Club
Cost control comes first
As yet, 2003 shows little sign of economic recovery, so the control
of costs will continue to be at the very top of the IT director's
agenda. The bean counters will remain a threat.
Service delivery versus cost reduction: all those
well-trodden routes towards cost reduction will remain near the top
of the IT director's agenda. However these will inevitably have a
knock-on effect on service delivery (and hence direct criticism of
IT and the IT director) and hence juggling will be a key competence
this year.
Manage the structure of systems delivery: should
we outsource more of services, allow user departments to undertake
more, or should the IT director's group remain the primary source
of supply?
Web services: this has to be on the list, if only
to determine exactly what it means. Many business managers use
Google at home and just want to ask questions of all the
organisation's databases and expect exhaustive answers, but few
businesses can deliver this at present. Perhaps reducing customer
expectations is nearly as good as delivering the goods!
And, of course, securing a seat on the board. Never forget personal
aspirations.
Chris Edwards, professor of management IS, Cranfield School of
Management
Aiming for maximum value
IT directors need to maximise the value of the organisation's
investment in IT. This will, for example, involve infrastructure
consolidation to reduce costs and complexity, innovative sourcing
strategies to reduce costs, risks and implementation timescales,
and increased deployment of enterprise management tools to reduce
costs and ease the support burden.
Business alignment remains a critical issue: IT
directors need to ensure they focus on achieving business outcomes,
rather than focusing on inward-looking technical issues. IT
directors should take a hard look at what the business wants to
achieve, and ensure that IT supports these objectives. The days of
internal IT strategists defining standards based on technical
merit, rather than business requirements, have now ended.
Post-Enron, many organisations will be looking at
their corporate governance arrangements, and the IT director should
be leading the way. IT governance, relating particularly to how
organisations exploit IT and a skilled delivery workforce to its
advantage while managing key risks, should be on every
organisation's agenda.
Security, privacy and risk management is now a key
concern. Threats posed by global terrorism mean that organisations
must turn their attention to business continuity (rather than just
IT disaster recovery). Legislation such as the Data Protection Act,
the Freedom of Information Act and the Human Rights Act means
organisations cannot ignore their responsibilities to both protect
privacy and comply with requirements to provide citizens and
customers with information.
IT directors should expect significant supplier
consolidation. Picking the winners now, and making contingency
plans for how to deal with non-viable suppliers will be a key
issue.
Anthony Harrison, The NCC Group
Agree the budget, meet the target
Budgeting and cost management are top of the list. All the pressure
on budgets and costs is downwards. Agreeing on spending in the face
of stagnant markets and scepticism about IT's capability to deliver
is the first challenge for the IT director; meeting this target is
the second.
Maintain service quality while rightsizing: the IT
director needs to understand and demonstrate that IT is generating
an acceptable return on investment, and is considering all
appropriate cost saving opportunities such as business process
outsourcing. It is not scale anymore, it is bottom line.
Understand the scale and pace of market
consolidation in the IT sector: the names of service providers may
change, and more importantly their ability to deliver in the short-
and medium term. The IT director will want to know if he can
continue to rely on key third parties to deliver.
Identify opportunities provided by the depressed
market. The glut of skilled IT professionals on the market allows
managers to strengthen their teams. There are also great deals on
capital expenditure, particularly with some hardware suppliers
seeking sales.
Manage expectations: the business needs to know
what service delivery can be provided by IT given the changes in
market conditions and any internal reorganisation. The IT director
also has to manage the IT team. Keeping people isn't hard; keeping
them happy is.
David Hughes, Deloitte and Touche
IT team must add value to business
Top IT directors are focused on one thing and one thing alone:
increasing the value that they and the IT team are delivering to
the business through helping it to increase its strategic options
and maintain short-term agility. They are working to achieve this
through a number of strands.
Demonstration and measurement of the value in terms that are
meaningful to the business
Identify opportunities for generating more value out of completed
investment projects
Create new ways of generating revenues, for example, using
corporate assets in new ways
Increase the performance of the individuals in the IT team to
deliver faster, better and cheaper
Take partnerships and sourcing relationships to a new level and
create new value.
Christopher Young, Impact Programme
