The changing role of IT: part II

In my last post, I spoke to some of the challenges a service provider will have as the role of its IT department continues to evolve over time. In this post, I’m going to offer three areas to consider on how to address these challenges.

• Work on the organisation. Specifically, break down traditional functional roles in the IT organisation and in the product organisations. There will always be a need for the deep functional expertise in both these teams, but you have to develop some team members who understand both domains relatively well to get the right product definition

• The relationship between the CIO and the CMO has to be stronger than before. Again,some cross-domain expertise should be the goal where the CIO can learn more about the marketing and product strategy to add more value in helping to differentiate the service offering. The CMO can learn more about the capabilities the IT systems provide to help focus on the areas that can bring the greatest differentiation

• Really focus on the user experience. Making technology solve hard, complex problems in an easy to interact with manner is the Holy Grail here. Allowing users intuitive, easy access to their services and also the right level of configuration and customisation capabilities to handle a ranges of users from the novice to the power user will drive good adoption, high usage rates, and a differentiated user experience

For most service providers, the core service components will be purchased from the same set of vendors yielding limited differentiation opportunities. Going forward, this limitation will create a great opportunity for how a service provider utilises its IT assets to the best competitive advantage