Skill-Sets For Business-Technology Handshake

The strategy on the demand side in the enterprise is changing quite drastically. It is no- more about providing technical solutions but serving business solutions. The mindset of outsourcing vendors has also shifted from delivering technical solutions to more about fitting the offering into the business landscape.

With the technology shop outsourced, setting the agenda for the CIO office

After outsourcing becoming prevalent, one question asked quite openly is about the role of technology in the demand side of the enterprise. The role is changing so drastically that the technology guys are becoming technology brokers. There are two aspects to it - One part of the responsibility is primarily being at par if not better in terms of understanding the business nuances whether it’s about the strategy, challenges, trends in the same and other industries etc and the ability to relate to business and then marry it with trends in technology and jointly weave the business strategies. Technology is the enabler and the show-stopper today. Thus the business strategy should be backed-up by technology delivery be it channel or back-end technologies.

The second function of the technology organisation is to be continuously abreast with the use cases of technologies, work with vendors, OEMs to let them understand the company’s specific requirements in different domains like with the architecture design, risk management, vendor management and project management. This integration process will lead to the development of the core-competencies of technology management. It’s not about hiring more programmers and database administrators. We should let the vendor partners take care of that. They can do a far superior job than to be managed by internal resources.

Provision of Business services is also an important function, which again can also be outsourced. In case they are handled internally, heterogeneous business services should be weaved together along with a proper visualisation of the architecture of the suite of technology applications and unlike other industries BFSI doesn’t have one ERP creating the need to hire multiple partners for different kind of business services and then weave those together to a comprehensive solution. This is where the role of technology is changing a lot and the technology departments are moving more towards business as against more and more technical.

In all of these respects, there may be organisations that are doing a better job than us. We have to keep a close eye on their strengths and weaknesses and then take judicious calls on the basis of the incumbent business environment. This is one major shift that is happening.

Skill-sets for internal Technology Management

This demands far greater amount of skill sets than the traditional ones. There are three basic skill sets - General Management of the IT infrastructure esp. on the software aspects.

Conflict Management holds importance in managing multiple stakeholders and vendors.

Expectation Management is also coming to the fore with consumer technologies fast outpacing the corporate technologies. The kinds of devices available at offices are not at par with those available with the employees. Having said that cost-control is also important so the CIO has to balance needs versus wants.

The second skill is Domain Management where CIOs should be speaking the business language. The management doesn’t want typical three letter acronyms or technology jargon explanations but a simple to understand business talk/presentation. The more the CIO is deeply entrenched in business the more will be the business tone in his communication. It’s an automatic shift. The domain expertise also includes relationship management, which requires Technology Heads to set expectations, goals and then periodically review.

The third skill is Project Management – In all projects the number of stakeholders are increasing. No more are there dedicated project management teams under your management where the CIOs can prioritise the deliverables as per his discretion and make submissions as per deadlines. The project timelines are crunching and the number of projects too. All assignments cannot be applied the same project management yardsticks. There are simple projects that do not need complex frameworks and there are complex projects that cannot be simplified. It’s not only about following the project management principles but also applying those with the necessary skills to the dynamically changing nature of every project. These are some of the skills that should be adopted by the technology department to re-skill and reinvent themselves and if the need be also import some business executives because every technology employee cannot graduate himself to the desired level.