Refining IT Role as the Digital Business Value Creator

IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage, With emerging digital opportunities and risks, business leaders, including IT leaders are once again seeing the benefit of running IT as a business inside the business, that's the way to go. IT also needs to clearly define its role as a value creator for business.
IT needs to transform from a controller to an enabler: IT strives to be a revenue contributor to the business. Many IT organizations still run in the industry mode -built to last, not responsive enough to adapt to changes. So the business even complains that IT sometimes becomes the very obstacle to getting things done. CIOs need to spend the time to understand the business issues enough to push back on what they asked for and explain how alternatives can provide more value. This is extremely difficult to without spending significant time learning the business. In order to rebuild IT reputation as an enabler,  instead of having overly rigid rules, set digital principles to encourage innovative problem-solving; instead of  saying no, no, no and quoting policy, leverage the latest on-demand model, create customized products and solutions to tailor customers’ need; IT needs to speed up, engage as a business partner, to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and agility. When IT reduces the cost of doing business, it increases the margin.
IT needs to shift from a support center to an innovation hub: People can work anytime, anywhere, to access any necessary information to create any innovative idea now with partners outside organization today. Traditional IT organizations as an invisible support function with heavy-weight boxes and tangled wires to only “keep the lights on,” is no longer sufficient to respond to increasing speed of changes; we are entering the new age-the convergence of enterprise IT and consumerization of IT,  It’s that consumers and employees are using the same technology devices for similar activities. It represents a merging of corporate and consumer capabilities within the organization. It blurs the line between professional life and personal life. Therefore, “T” driven IT needs to shift to “I” oriented IT, running IT as a software startup. Digital customers and employees expect applications to be as intuitive and task-oriented. Sustainable innovation means products and services need be improved via continuous conversation.
IT needs to learn how to build a strong brand via selling the right things to the right people for achieving high business value: In order to run IT as a business, besides building the good products and solutions, IT needs to know how to promote its products and services. IT can not be seen as an enabler unless IT management clearly understands what their organization does for a living. What is required is having a strategy that integrates these technologies across the entire enterprise, including how best to source them. Also, make sure that the external customers who purchase products or services have a great experience relating to any IT systems that impact them. IT should be fully integral to the business, aligned to enterprise objectives, and of course, fully competent to provide on-going support and tactical execution. That is not an easy task but it is not impossible either.
The priority for CIOs is to genuinely position IT as an integral and inseparable part of the business. It means involving businesses enough in the process so they see your success as their success. CIOs need to lead the department so that every level of the organization has great working relationships with the IT team. A CIO needs to have a powerful toolbox encompassing strong business acumen, soft skills such as communication and listening, technical experience and solid managerial leadership, in order to reinvent the tarnished IT reputation and refine IT role as the digital business value creator.

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