When you spend most of your working day advocating for the IT industry, as I do, it is very easy to believe that IT is the answer to almost every question. However, a recent conversation with my counterpart in Washington DC caused me to take stock.
He’s worried that the IT industry is becoming less and less relevant. Although he’s thinking about its relevance to US federal government policy makers, it prompted me to think about our relevance in a wider sense.
It may be seven years since
Nicholas Carr wrote his now infamous piece “IT Doesn’t Matter” but much of what he says there still resonates. As IT has becomes ubiquitous it has become “invisible”.
To understand this I find it helps to divide IT into three categories: enhancing technologies, enabling technologies and transforming technologies.
Enhancing technologies let us continue doing the things we normally do, but more efficiently. Enabling technologies change the way we do things: they enable new processes, new ways of working.
Enabling technologies include a whole series of technologies based on virtualisation, including in-silico testing and modelling and paperless office technologies.
Transforming technologies however, change fundamental behaviour. They change what we do, stimulate innovation and drive new business models.
The internet, and in particular broadband, is a classic transformative technology. It has allowed the growth of dependent technologies and allowed new business models to be created. Think of all the businesses that only exist on eBay.
Transforming technologies are rare – perhaps once in a generation. When those technologies come along they change the game in a whole host of ways.
The environment in which these technologies are enhancing, enabling or transforming is constantly changing too. At its most basic the switch from an “invest to grow” world to a “cut to survive” world has a marked impact on the receptiveness of customers to IT – of any flavour.
Much of the private sector though is moving back into the “invest to grow” world but with perhaps less tolerance for IT suppliers who think they’re more relevant than they are, and promote enhancing technologies as transformational, for example.
In the coming months I’m going to be exploring further how the industry and its constituent companies can become more relevant. But a number of themes are already clear.
Technology is only part of any business change project. Success depends as much on how that technology is integrated into the processes of an organisation and whether the workforce has bought into the project and has the skills to adopt it. Really understanding the customer’s business and talking to them in their own language is more important than ever.
However excited we may be about a whizzy new web 2.0 feature, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the customer’s own business environment and their particular needs is vital to forging a lasting and mutually rewarding relationship.
But great relationships need to go further than that. IT companies need to be using their solutions to lead their customers to entirely new business opportunities.
It can be difficult for companies to develop these skills and insights. In fact members tell us that a significant extra benefit from regularly attending Intellect’s market facing group meetings, such as healthcare or financial services, is the deeper insights they gain of the developments, issues and trends in those markets. Insights they find increasingly valuable to their customer relationships.
I would be very interested in readers’ views. Is our relevance on the wane? Does it matter and if so what can we do about it? I look forward to hearing from you - john.higgins@intellectuk.org.
John Higgins, director general, Intellect
