Survival of IT departments in organisations

Adapt IT director, Gavin Halse says for most enterprises technology has become a strategic business enabler. "There are many measures of business value other than containing cost, including revenue growth, agility and customer relationships, and IT can play a meaningful role in each of these areas."

Halse says that in his experience, IT departments are sometimes unfortunately perceived not for the value they deliver, but rather as a necessary cost to be reduced at every opportunity. "Companies who perceive IT to be slow to react, expensive and offering questionable contribution to business value will look around at the technology on offer to consumers and question whether or not there is an alternative."

Outsourcing is becoming attractive

Outsourcing infrastructure, platforms and business applications are becoming increasingly attractive to companies, as outsourcing can often more effectively contribute value in the form of reduced cost, better scalability for growth, increased agility, and better customer reach. Furthermore, certain IT enabled business processes that do not offer any real competitive advantage can in general be offered by cloud based service providers far more effectively than in-house systems.

Halse says that at Adapt IT they invest in understanding the strategic drivers of their customers and link this through to their IT delivery model. "This understanding requires insights into the specific details of the customer's business as well as the industry context in which they operate. With this knowledge we are able to develop and recommend a technology strategy that ensures that the customer effectively integrates IT to support the strategic drivers. This strategy has to take into consideration the reality of mobility, cloud based services and outsourcing options."

Skills needed are changing rapidly

The skills needed to ensure IT departments continue to add value in a world dominated by mobility and real-time business decision making are rapidly changing. Traditional IT departments who fail to up skill themselves and embrace the new technologies will become obsolete in a short time.
Businesses will increasingly outsource IT to providers who are trusted advisers that show that they understand their business intimately, can differentiate strategic IT enablers from commodity services and can at the same time keep pace with the new technologies. These trusted advisers will assist companies to find the optimum balance between in-house IT and outsourced service providers, and the balance may not necessarily favour the status quo in the existing IT department.