Learn how to speak my language

When was the last time that you sat in a meeting with IT to learn about the state of the environment and service quality? Did the CIO talk about server capacity and availability statistics? Did you have any clue as to how that linked with your priorities and objectives? In most meetings between IT and the business, the two groups speak at each other in incomprehensible languages. What is supposed to be a collaborative exercise to achieve common goals ends up as another lost opportunity to make progress.

Why do the rifts between IT and the business only seem to be growing even though there is ample awareness that they exist and need to be eradicated? First, it’s a communication problem. IT doesn’t understand the business, and the business doesn’t understand IT. Second, it’s an accountability issue. Who’s responsible for bridging the gap that exists to facilitate collaboration? The undisputed fact is that IT exists to serve the business. So if change is required, it is in IT’s best interest to step up and figure out how to better deliver that service.

Business Concerns with IT

When it comes to dealing with IT, business professionals express some very real challenges that hinder progress and collaboration. When an IT professional sits down at the table and presents IT reports, reciting measurements with little context, business eyes glaze over. The business simply wants to know how IT performance impacts its ability to deliver on its objectives and goals. But in most cases, IT is unable to break free from its existing vernacular to learn the language of the business and communicate in a meaningful way.

According to Craig Symons from Forrester Research in his paper Trends in IT Performance Management, “Most IT organizations remain focused on the tactical as opposed to the strategic, especially when it comes to measurement. This was borne out in our IT measurement and management survey in which only one-third of respondents had an IT measurement framework in place. Despite all of the pressures on IT to align itself with the business, demonstrate value, improve quality of services, reduce costs, and ensure compliance (e.g., SOX etc.); only one out of three IT organizations are rigorously measuring performance.” *

The business also doesn’t understand the trade offs involved in investing in one area over another. If IT could present a business impact case, decision makers could better evaluate how to direct budget in a way that is going to advance business goals. IT needs to stop thinking in terms of servers and software because those conversations are irrelevant to the business.

And trust is a big issue plaguing the IT/business relationship in many organizations. Based on precedent, the business doesn’t believe that IT is organized in a way that facilitates the realization of mutual goals. The business perceives IT as resistant to change. But in many organizations, the reality is that limited resources make it challenging for IT to move beyond maintaining service levels to drive innovation for strategic goals.

Making a case for change

What do business professionals really want from IT? Most of them want to be engaged in a meaningful way. So instead of starting a meeting with a discussion around server capacity, CIOs need to start thinking about presenting a business impact chart first. Once business professionals see that impact was up, for example, the CIO can link to his server capacity chart. All of a sudden, there is a business context for discussing server capacity. In this scenario, IT has effectively made the business a stakeholder in the discussion, highlighting the advantage of making a change from a perspective that matters to the business.

Business professionals also want IT to be more in touch with the reality of the business. According to Myles Suer, Product Strategist for HP DecisionCenter Software, “The business wants the assurance that IT is delivering differentiating capabilities to drive market advantages. That means that IT must focus its limited investment and energy upon activities that maximize the total value delivered to business.”

Suer goes on to note that often the business wants to alter discussions with IT to concentrate on areas including resource allotment, investment focus and tradeoffs. For these discussions to be relevant, IT needs to evaluate changes from the “what if” perspective with current, living, breathing data. Without those capabilities, IT remains a static agent in a fluid business environment. Decisions based on spreadsheet guesses do not enable the business to understand the impact of changes to service levels or staffing. As a result, the business has a lesser stake in those decisions.

Pressures mount for IT

Businesses are now demanding accountability and transparency from IT. Symons points to four key factors that are exacerbating the pressure:

• Effective IT governance is no longer optional. There is increasing pressure to improve enterprise governance, and IT governance is a subset of that. Research also demonstrates that organizations with good IT governance get more value from their IT investments.
• IT is critical to most business processes. Any failure in IT can have disruptive effects on the business, whether they are internal systems (order fulfillment) or external (e-commerce website).
• IT spending is a huge capital and operating expense. Operational IT expense can range from 1% to more than 12% of total revenues, and IT capital expense accounts for more than 50% of total capital expense in many companies.
• Regulatory and compliance issues mount. While Sarbanes-Oxley does not target IT explicitly, it impacts IT because almost all financial and accounting is performed via information systems that must be documented and verified.

In Symons’ view, “IT is too busy measuring the low level technical and tactical things and not measuring the right things like value creation, strategic alignment, human capital readiness, and other important measures of successful strategy execution.”

Performance Management Brings Business and IT Closer Together

What would happen if IT had the tools to transform? What if IT could engage the business in a meaningful way, align with strategy and measure strategic value, deliver transparency and accountability and better manage demand? The result would be a more productive partnership where IT and business speak the same language and work for common goals.

And getting there is no longer an elusive journey. With the availability of strategic performance measurement and management frameworks, IT will be better able to align with business strategy, set achievable targets, implement performance initiatives and promote greater accountability.

Symons defines performance management as, “developing a set of objectives, ensuring that those objectives are aligned with strategy, setting goals or targets for each objective, and measuring performance against the goal or target.” With performance management, IT will be able to address many of the business’ frustrations and clear a path for building a more trusting, productive relationship.

HP Provides Solution to Help IT Better Relate to the Business

Big transformations don’t happen overnight. Nor do they happen organically. They need to be planned, guided and managed to ensure the best chance of success. HP has developed a solution that represents the tool kit IT requires to transform itself into a business-minded function.

HP DecisionCenter Software is a solution that enables IT to:

• Create a scorecard similar to those being used in the rest of the business so IT measures performance against a yardstick
• Quantify the business impact of downtime or degraded IT performance
• Perform what if, business impact analysis using real data to evaluate changes in services, service levels, and staffing

Many of the business’ frustrations with IT can be targeted effectively with HP DecisionCenter. With the solution, IT can make decisions from a business perspective, demonstrate IT value to the business, highlight return on investment and create a shared understanding of IT’s impact on the business in a business-oriented framework.

“HP DecisionCenter provides a foundation for IT to remold itself in a business image, similar to the orientation it had before IT rationalization became the norm,” says Suer. “It changes the internal focus by adding an external dimension, enabling IT to break down the communication barrier proactively and come to the business table as an empowered, confident stakeholder. IT is suddenly able to initiate intelligent business discussions about headcount, service levels or optimization in a way that engages the business.”

A brighter future for business and IT

The business is well versed in the concept of scarcity. Up until now, most IT organizations have not been connected to that reality. Many IT organizations lacked the capabilities to make the kind of decisions that a scarcity-driven business environment demands. But as resources and budgets grow scarcer, business’ demand for IT return on investment is becoming more intense. So to survive, IT has to learn to become a dynamic, contributing function within the business it serves.

“IT has been primed for a change for a long time, but many organizations just didn’t have the tools to make it happen,” says Suer. “With HP DecisionCenter, IT can frame all of its conversations from a business impact standpoint and work with the business more efficiently when making decisions about optimizing human resources, bringing new services online quickly or rebalancing service levels. For business decision makers, HP DecisionCenter will empower IT to speak their language, so that collaboration will become a key element in achieving common strategic goals.”

“IT has been primed for a change for a long time, but many organizations just didn’t have the tools to make it happen,” says Suer. “With HP DecisionCenter, IT can frame all of its conversations from a business impact standpoint and work with the business more efficiently when making decisions about optimizing human resources, bringing new services online quickly or rebalancing service levels. For business decision makers, HP DecisionCenter will empower IT to speak their language, so that collaboration will become a key element in achieving common strategic goals.”

For more information on HP DecisionCenter, visit: www.managementsoftware.hp.com/products/ovdc

* “Trends in IT Performance Management,” Craig Symons, Forrester Research, December 13, 2005.
** “HP Targets CIO with DecisionCenter,” Enterprise Management Associates, June 2006.