How IT can do more to educate the business about digital transformation

IT is the de facto leader of digital programmes so how can it increase the involvement of the business?

Digital transformation must be a joint endeavour if it is to be any sort of transformation at all. It has to be a collaboration between the business and IT, with the business owning the processes and IT deciding on the best technological approach.

In a recent Computing research study among IT professionals the consensus was that the duties should ideally be shared 50:50 between IT and the business.

That said most commonly it's IT that occupies the driving seat. It's technologists who can look down the road and see what's coming, and it's these same technologists' job to explain what the various developments mean for the business over the medium to long term.

So if IT is the de facto leader, but if the ideal - in the opinion of technologists - is a more democratic division of labour, then IT departments must brush up on thier communication skills, particularly given the pace of change now upon us.

Take AI for example. This is an area where much progress is being made in areas of natural language processing, machine learning, robotics and pattern recognition. These will have a big impact on all kinds of industries from retail to healthcare, from manufacturing to leisure and entertainment. But how does IT explain AI when half the population immediately pictures the Terminator - or if not that, the termination of their job as an automaton or an algorithm takes its place? How can digital transformation be achieved, unless both sides are speaking the same language?

A significant number of our respondents admitted that they find it hard to communicate technical issues to the business in a way that is not overly simplistic, yet which is easy to understand and piques their interest - essential if they are to be positively engaged for the duration.

Among the tips that respondents gave offered is to tie explanations of the technical side of transformation to a particular line-of-business project so that the relevance is clear, and above avoid using the technical language so beloved of many in IT.

"The days of IT hiding behind acronyms and techie jargon are long gone. It's imperative to be able to explain in normal business language," said one respondent.

Sign up for our live web seminar Leading digital in the age of AI during when we will be discussing the findings of this research and how IT can best bridge the understanding gap.