According to IDC’s 2016 survey data, the top 2 concerns for Canadian IT leaders are responding to business change and ensuring the security of company data.
What sort of business change? We are living in an experience driven, mobile first, cloud first, and highly collaborative world. Your customers, regardless of their industry, are demanding new models for engagement. We shop for products and services in fundamentally different ways than we did just five years ago. The typical buyers’ journey includes plenty of research and online engagement with your reputation, customer reviews, and comparative shopping. It’s as true in the B2B marketplace as it is in the consumer space. We all want digital engagement, quick response times, and flawless service. And most organizations are putting renewed pressure on IT to help contribute to these digital transformation initiatives and boost innovation. But …
According to IDC, in 2010 the average Canadian business spent more than a third of their IT time and resources on backend infrastructure maintenance. In 2014 that number had more than doubled. More than 70% of time and resources were getting spent on data centre infrastructure purchasing and upkeep. Did you know that Canadian IT leaders actually spent 2 weeks MORE in 2015 consumed with infrastructure management and upkeep tasks than they did the year before? We can all see where this trend is going.
The increasing complexity of virtualization platforms, the interdependence of phone, computing, mobile devices, applications, and storage systems all together make it a hard day’s work to manage a mid-sized company’s IT ecosystem. And with the growing worries about the proliferation of cybercrime and information security breaches, it’s getting downright uncomfortable to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to balancing upkeep with your executive demands for innovation and customer engagement initiatives. Put simply, yesterday’s methods and yesterday’s IT department are not sustainable. Canadian IT leaders need to start making bigger bets and changing their approach to IT strategy and decision making. You need to help drive transformative change in your business, because that sort of initiative is what will drive better customer engagement in the long run.
Here’s a great quote from the last conference we attended with our friends at IDC: “Executives need to stop looking at IT projects as technology installations and start looking at them as periods of organizational change they have a responsibility to manage.”
Are you ready to transform?
