Our world continues to change before our eyes. IT is woven more and more into the fabric of our daily lives at home and at work. As IT professionals this means we have a great opportunity to shape the future of how we work and to help advance the UC mission (hint: our Guiding Statement). There is also a shift to a new paradigm – the so-called democratization of IT – with the help of companies like Google, Twitter, and Apple. IT people no longer have control over the technology and tools. Everyone does. So how do we adapt to these changes and also help our customers leverage the power and opportunity that comes with technology? What are your thoughts on how we as an IT group need to evolve? I invite you to brainstorm with me.
What do we need to be as an IT organization?
February 21, 2014All Articles
I have talked a lot of about we need to evolve to be more of a partner to the business – both administrative and academic. Itr’s not that I under-value the basics of IT. It’s just that organizations & users just expect that stuff to work. And where the bigger budgets tend to come in today’s world is in the partnerships between ourselves and different functional or academic leaders. PATH fits this model; it’s a business transformation initiative with a strong but not dominant IT element. Same can be true for several other projects we are involved in.
So the question is, how do we position ourselves to be that partner & what skill are critical to be successful in that role?
To be an effective supplier in any arena requires in depth understanding of your customer’s needs. We also have to possess a brutally honest understanding of our own competitive advantage – where it exists, as well as, where it doesn’t. Where we do not possess an advantage, let’s not waste the customer’s time. We need to be unrelenting in our curiosity about our customers needs as well as the quality and value of the services we deliver.
Steve – great comment, thanks
I’ll build on your comments and say that we need to evolve as an organization to understand our cost of delivering a service so we can have a service-vs.-cost conversation with our customers. This is what I see organization outside UC and Higher Ed doing. Based on the discussion, we may get into a scenario where we improve our service or maybe we go outside (that could also be to a campus) to get the service done for the customer. We’re making concrete steps this year at UCOP to get a better idea on cost to deliver services and this continue to be a push I will make