TAG | A CIO's guide to relevancy during recession |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Friday, 27 February 2009 | |
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Page 3 of 3 IT is, and should be, a value-adding department. Use your far greater database mastery to produce meaningful reports. Talk to Finance and find out what they know and what they don't know.Featured Whitepaper
5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support
Perhaps you can tackle purchase orders, reporting each week how many uninvoiced P/Os are in the system. Each of these reflects committed expenses still to come in. If you can deliver these or anything else - instead of asking for funding to roll out Office 2007 across the company - you're adding value and especially relevant value in cash-strapped times. On the surface you might consider these responsibilities of the Finance team. Yet IT are the people best positioned to deliver. Firstly, if Finance had been able to produce such timely data in the first place maybe we wouldn’t all be in such a situation. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s the technical team who live in a word without barriers. There’s no limitation on the meaningful information which can be extracted. We’re not subject to using merely what the software package provides. We have the know-how to automate tasks and set them to auto-run on schedule. Get on top of company assets that are within your sphere of understanding and influence. Do you have a list of mobile phone users, BlackBerry users, mobile phone network modems and the like? If not, go make it. Audit all your telecommunications. Find services that should be cancelled. Evaluate if the data plans are at appropriate levels - including too low as well as too high. I’d rather have a monthly commitment a bit too high than run into costly excess usage fees. Talk to your company’s executives. Determine what their goals are to develop new business, retain existing business, and to reduce their costs. Think about how technology can work towards these goals. The key thought that needs to be burned into your brain is “alignment.” It’s the number one priority now. You might have a veritable encyclopaedia of buzzwords on your shopping list for the year’s projects – virtualisation, Windows Server 2008, co-location, thin clients, mobility, whatever. Yet, unless every item can be directly mapped to a clear company goal and business strategy you have to cull it. If you think your job is tough keep in mind that the line-of-business staff have to actually go out and make bad debtors pay up, go and find new business – in a time when most everyone is winding back on spending – and just simply bring revenue in. I’ve mocked Finance a bit in this story, but with seriousness do consider the knife-edge role the CFO is playing. If he or she can’t keep cash flowing, if they can’t raise capital and manage debt then they’re in danger of being walked out the door. As depressing as recession is, it’s an opportunity for IT to rise up and demonstrate leadership. Remember two things: align yourself with Finance, and align yourself with the business. Nothing else matters right now. |
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