Creating Value Through Technology Strategy
On 13 October 2016, Mike Bowden of the Leading Edge Forum will be presenting at the LEF UK Regional Briefing, “BRMs Must Add Digital Business Leadership (DBL) Skills to their Toolkit to Remain Successful.”
Amongst others, one of the skills he will be talking about is the ability to define an IT strategy that creates real tangible value for your enterprise.
It is clear that the world within IT operates is changing quickly. The drivers of that change can be described as such:
It is critical that Business Relationship Managers (BRMs) everywhere change their focus and the way things are done in order to become Digital Business Leaders, moving from technology provider to business partner and peer.
The key change is moving from focusing on technology to focusing on business, while creating technology strategies that increase revenue, decrease company operating expenses, or improve asset utilization. In essence, the goal is to create sustainable positive cash flow.
How BRMs do that is changing as well. In addition to the traditional back office value creation ‘hunting grounds’—the stated business strategy or plan, reengineering transactional business process, automating operations, the business change agenda, Supply Chain, Finance, HR, and enabling the operating model—we need to start looking at the front office.
That involves using technology to change the customer experience. Examples include creating a seamless multichannel route to market, completely reengineering the business model, adding technology to products and services, forming partnerships in your industry with potential disrupters, using analytics to gain insights about the market and customer behaviour, or simply better interactive marketing.
IT BRMs must position themselves as leaders in this space, able to draw direct connections between business strategy, technology implementation, and value creation. In order to reach this goal, BRMs must differentiate between technology that:
(a) Changes the business (model, product, or service)
(b) Drives business improvement
The key change is moving from focusing on technology to focusing on business, while creating technology strategies that increase revenue, decrease company operating expenses, or improve asset utilization.
(c) Does not acknowledge the differences between the enterprise and the competition
Once these differences are established, BRMs can then lead a conversation about (a) and (b) with their business partners, so they are also focused here and not, as they have been traditionally, on (c).
To learn more, join the LEF at the Regional Briefing in London on 13 October 2016.
This article was previously published at the Leading Edge Forum with permission.
Mike Bowden is a CIO Advisor for the Leading Edge Forum and a core member of the Business Relationship Management (BRM) instructor team, helping clients drive greater business value through powerful business relationship management. He is also a global IT leader and CIO Sounding Board Advisor providing transformational consulting and advisory services to global companies.