In the next couple of years, we are expecting a massive growth of the digital universe. Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are rapidly outpacing the traditional desktops. By the end of 2011, there were in fact more mobile devices than people on earth. By 2015, Gartner expects that more than 3 billion people will be online and of course all these digiphiles come with a digital footprint. Through their mobile devices they all take part in a global sharing frenzy where everybody happily adds to an ever increasing mountain of data. Big Data is what they call this piling up of data and it should be on top of every CEO's agenda. Big Data is not an IT issue, it is going to be a real business challenge in 2012 and beyond. It will require substantial investments in technologies that enable enterprises to store and mine the information haystack. On top of that, other evolutions like the cloud, IT consumerization, social media waves and the Internet of things are getting ready to disrupt business-as-usual.
In essence, these might look like technology trends but in fact they are all business trends that come with a techy flavour. These evolutions will fundamentally change the way we will be doing business in the future.
The gold rule: he who has the gold, rules
For decades, we have tried to figure out who should be in the driving seat for formulating the firm's technology strategy. In an ideal world, business and technology planning go together like horse and carriage but in many cases, we have put the cart before the horse. No way you can come up with a decent IT strategy if the strategic direction of the company has not been formalized and vouched for. And if there is no business strategy to align with, where does this leave your IT department? Well, they are flying blind. Flying blind basically means that - without a proper business roadmap - you are heading for a collision course and this will hurt big time.
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, found for example that only one in eight information technology projects can be considered truly successful (as in meeting the original time, cost and requirements criteria). They calculated that the cost of project failure across the European Union was €142 billion in 2004. The Standish group comes up with similar figures (their CHAOS report is a must read for every CFO by the way). That is a lot of money down the drain and the only person who can stop this is the CEO. The CEO is ultimately accountable for the Profit and Loss of the company and has to ensure that investments, be it in marketing, R&D or technology pay off in the long run. It is up to the CEO, together with the board of directors of course, to ensure that the firm's resources are well spent and that there is a decent return on capital employed (ROCE).
How to protect your gold
The typical medium-sized or large company will spend between 1 % up to 10 % of its annual operating revenue on IT and you can be sure that a substantial percentage of the total investment budget will vanish into thin air as a result of misalignment. So what's the best way to avoid these disinvestments and subsequent dilution of resources? There is only one way to fix this... in my view, it is time the business took ownership of the IT investment strategy.
Not sure where to start? Well, no worries... together with IRM UK we are running a seminar on successfully aligning business and IT end of March. During this two day seminar (click here for the agenda), you will learn everything you always wanted to know about the mechanics of alignment. You will learn how to connect the dots between people, processes and technology and discover why intelligent governance is the key to protecting the firm's IT turf. You will meet peers with whom you will work on topics like Enterprise Architecture and IT marketing. During these two days, you will discover how to manage the alignment journey like a business transformation program...
There are still a couple of seats left so grab the opportunity and protect your gold: register here and get ready for the new economy!
