infoTECH Feature

August 11, 2015

IT Groups Increasingly Tapped for Innovation Amid Pressure from Leaders

Information technology (IT) groups are increasingly being viewed as the goose that lays the golden eggs in many companies. While some are content to allow those eggs of value to come naturally, others are demanding an increased egg-laying pace. A new study from the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network shows just what's being expected from IT these days.

The BPI Network study—titled “Accelerating Business Transformation Through IT Innovation: Getting the Business Leader Take on the IT Change Mandate”—shows good news perhaps taken a bit far. The study showed that the lion's share of business decision makers are putting a lot more time and attention into getting a handle on disruptive technologies. This is great news by any stretch, of course; what's more, this time and attention is paying off, as companies demand a better job done in terms of embracing that new technology and putting it to work, making for new channels for customer engagement as well as a better overall experience.

Moreover, the study found that businesses are actually looking at transformation based on the IT infrastructure, putting focus on things like updated data centers and hybrid IT models with a new focus on cloud-based operations. Almost 70 percent of global managers said that technology has become “far more important” to the business, and this is great news.

But here's where a problem might be about to emerge. The study also revealed that just 47 percent of the executives polled said that the level of innovation in IT departments was either “good” or “very high.” Fifty-two percent, meanwhile, found it either “just making progress” or “poor,” and 42 percent considered IT to be doing a good job of being a more strategically important business partner. The remaining 58 percent considered progress on that front to be either poor or moderate.

Thankfully, though, businesses had at least some idea of the innovations desired. Businesses wanted faster response times to changing conditions, a focus on the digital experience as a means to get ahead of other firms, the ability to deliver new applications more efficiently, improvements to the customer experience and a better understanding of new technologies with disruptive potential.

The potential problem here, meanwhile, is that while it's clear businesses want more innovation in IT, innovation is not just a thing that can be produced by working harder. It's easy to see businesses start to demand a greater innovation pace, and in the process, burn out the IT professionals involved in the process as a greater pace was demanded and could not ultimately be delivered upon. By like token, this new focus might generate more resources for IT departments, allowing more professionals to be brought in and the pace of innovation borne among more shoulders, metaphorically.

It's one thing to demand greater innovation. It's another entirely to actually support that pace and recognize the limits accordingly. Just which approach is taken is the one that will determine whether there are more geese laying golden eggs, or just one goose laying, hassled to the point of derangement, before it just walks away and takes its innovation eggs with it.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
FOLLOW US

Subscribe to InfoTECH Spotlight eNews

InfoTECH Spotlight eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the IT industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter

infoTECH Whitepapers