Baseline Magazine - September/October 2010

BUSINESSES ARE FOCUSING ON TWO KEY PRIORITIES: CUTTING COSTS AND
GROWING REVENUE. BY SCOTT ARCHIBALD

BASELINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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IT’S BEEN SAID THAT THE ONLY CERTAINTY IN LIFE IS change, and that statement has never been truer than it is today. The global recession has changed the way companies think about business. In fact, this recession had a 400 percent greater impact on our economy in terms of the gross domestic product than the Great Depression of the 1930s did.

Businesses globally are focusing on two priorities at the moment: Cutting costs and growing revenue.

Executives are looking to mitigate risk by converting as many fixed costs as possible to variable costs. Fixed costs can include facilities, employees and IT infrastructure. We can see this trend on the hiring front, with unemployment numbers remaining at around 9. 7 percent. Companies are not hiring employees en masse, and many are turning to consultants and contractors to fill their needs.

From a growth perspective, many businesses are simply trying to get back to pre-2008 revenue levels. Emerging markets represent a huge growth opportunity for many companies, and continue to be an untapped resource for others.

So what does this business reality have to do with IT? In truth, everything. It’s crucial for IT departments to understand the larger business challenges that their leaders are facing and to emerge as a strategic partner rather than a cost center or support function.

Smart IT executives will spend time with business leaders and decision-makers to develop projects and initiatives that help the company achieve the aforementioned priorities. This will accomplish three important objectives:

• Develop relationships: Engage in face time with the business people who hold the purse strings to foster dialogues about projects and initiatives. And encourage your management staff to form relationships with their counterparts in the business.

• Learn the business: For IT personnel to take on a
truly strategic role within an organization, they need
to understand business goals and objectives, compre-
hend the challenges the company is facing, and identify
the role IT can play in resolving business problems.

LEARN TO COMMUNICATE

As simple as that may sound, most individuals—whether in IT or not—don’t understand the value of communication in business. In many instances, those who succeed do so because they know how to speak to their audience in a language the audience understands. In other words, a conversation with a business executive in very technical terms and IT jargon will likely cause that person to tune out.

A logical extension of learning the business is to communicate in business terms. By learning the enterprise’s objectives and challenges, it makes it easier for IT executives to communicate possibilities and opportunities in terms the business can understand. In other words, “Speak the local language.” Understanding the big business picture will lead to more strategic thinking.