Building the Foundation for Business – Technology Integration

By Jeanne Kerr, SPHR, HCS, SWP

For the sake of transparency, I am not an IT person. (I am married to one, but I’m not sure how much that counts). So, why am I writing this article for BRM Institute? Having spent the past 20 plus years in Human Resources, I have a deep understanding about becoming a business partner and trusted advisor. It is astounding just how much IT and HR professionals have in common.

First, in the eyes of many business leaders and owners, we both fall into the “bucket of necessary evil.” In these folks’ minds, the role of HR is to keep them from being sued, and the role of IT is to… well, it seems to have something to do with keeping email running and making sure orders process and ship. We both constantly feel we need to justify our existence and beg for the resources to simply stay afloat.

Whether we call our quest Business Relationship Manager or Strategic HR Business Partner, the challenges and solutions are the same. If we want to be seen as more than service and support providers, we need to integrate ourselves into the business. Believe me, the business will not do this for us.

Where to begin?

1. Stop saying you got into IT because you did not want to deal with people. Your systems, hardware and software are the means to an end, and the end is helping the business achieve its goals. People set those goals. Ergo, you must deal with people.
2. Understand your company’s culture. How adverse are people to change? There will be change. Avoid the pitfall of making the new solution look and act too much like the old system to avoid the appearance of change.
3. Understand the business. What keeps your CEO up at night? It isn’t whether you should give everyone iPhones or Droids. It isn’t that Yammer is oh-so–cool, or that your projects are a 10 on the sexiness scale. It’s about revenue growth and profits. It’s about shareholder value and return on investment.
4. Have a clear understanding of the business strategies, both short- and long-term. Analyze what you need to do to make sure those strategies are successful. Only then, develop your IT strategy. If something does not directly support the business strategy, unless it is a compliance issue, it should take a very low number on the priority list.
5. Think through your IT strategy both vertically and horizontally. What does this mean? Suppose one of the business strategies is to be a top service provider. Your analysis shows that a better CRM system is critical to achieving this strategy. The task of developing the RFP for the system falls to your Director of Applications in partnership with Procurement. The Applications Director will develop goals for her Applications Support Manager, who in turn will develop goals around the CRM selection and implementation for his team. This is developing your strategy vertically.
   But won’t this CRM selection and implementation touch other IT groups? This is what I mean by developing your strategy horizontally. For the project to succeed, all of the IT teams: systems architects, business analyst, project managers, networks, security, etc. all have to work in tandem. Their goals must align with each other. (Oh, no, more people involvement!)
6. Talk to your customers. Oh, did I say talk? I might have meant ask questions and listen. Between the lines. Probe to deeply understand their problems. Don’t just ask them what they want, because they don’t understand what technology can do for them. Uncover their pain points in order to present solutions and alternatives.
7. Define business processes: Filter out what should and should not be automated. Eliminate paper and forms. IT can then match automation requests with what the software can do.
8. Measure and prove your value. Sure, you and procurement are going to do a great job selecting the right vendor, the right maintenance agreement, and negotiate a great contract. You also need to measure the impact of the new system. How? You are going to have to partner with your sales and customer service teams. Do customer service ratings increase? Do sales increase? Does customer attrition decrease?
   Now you may be thinking this is not your job. And it isn’t, directly. But if you are thinking like a business person, you quickly realize how critical data is to prove the value you contribute to the bottom line. When you can present to your business leaders that your CRM implementation cost X amount of money as compared with revenue increases of 2 times that amount, a 10% cut in customer loss, a 12% decrease in customer complaints (which by the way allowed for a 13% decrease in customer service headcount over a two year period), now you are looking like a hero.

Your value proposition is only as strong as what you deliver to the business, not what you deliver to your business’s technology.
Begin with your business strategy. Develop your IT strategy to align with the business strategy. Integrate your IT units’ and team member goals. Talk to your customers. Track your costs. Partner with the rest of your organization to gather results. Results are going to be related to revenue, cost, time savings, customer satisfaction, or compliance.

Present your successes in light of these and you will be on your way to proving the value you bring.