It is good to talk

Can you keep a secret? For many years, if you worked in IT you were certainly expected to.

Ten years ago, the chances of a stock market-quoted company publicly revealing anything about its IT strategy was remote. Technology was associated with that elusive boardroom concept of competitive advantage. If you talked about your IT, it was tantamount to giving away state secrets.

But now, thankfully, more and more leading companies are seeing the benefits of talking about their technology successes.

Last week, IT featured positively in the latest financial results from British Airways (BA) and Sainsbury’s, while Tesco rarely misses the chance to mention Tesco.com, the biggest online grocer in the world.

And if you are a retail bank, failing to promote the security and functionality of your web site means losing potential customers.

Shareholders increasingly want to know that the companies in which they invest understand how to make the most of business technology, and this is forcing a more open approach.

Good IT is a sign of a well-run, innovative organisation that recognises the central role technology now plays in corporate strategy. Talking about success also reinforces the fact that the majority of IT projects – in the private and public sectors – work well. Technology failures are the exception, not the rule, even if they do tend to be high-profile all too often.

The more that technology features as an attention-grabbing element of the way companies do business, the better for all who work in the IT department.

If a chief executive is discussing the benefits of technology to a business audience, it demystifies technology and puts the role of the IT leader in the boardroom where it belongs.

What is needed now is a trickle-down from the bigger, opinion-forming firms such as BA and Sainsbury’s. If IT directors do not have a success story they can convince the chief executive to tell, perhaps they are keeping the wrong sort of secrets.

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