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Business TransformationTools are changing, opportunities are broader, and business leaders across the board are recognizing the value of data. Success is going to require a new outlook, driven by greater insights, to help make decisions for the future. Business transformation is about changing both your technologies and your business in order to propel your business forward. Businesses have to change how they operate, look for opportunities to make processes better, and consider how they deliver value to employees and customers. Armed with efficient tools that enable the required data transparency and reliable insights, IT leaders can drive business transformation, helping businesses to operate more effectively and efficiently.
Harnessing IT to Help with Business Transformation
Business transformation occurs within a company’s own internal processes. IT can be a driving force for this transformation by providing data transparency. It is a common misconception that the operational roles of the IT department and the business are different. Or that IT departments have their own focus, are expensive, slow down growth, or even that they are focused too much on security, governance, operational aspects.
Rather, a better view is to see IT leaders as a trusted advisor, or a solid foundation that trust can push the business to further growth. The IT goals and objectives should be aligned with the greater goals of the business, with roles and accountability clearly defined. IT departments should be collecting data in terms that the business can consume and understand, and putting that data into a perspective that allows business leaders to make decisions around technology. IT departments need to align with the agility necessary to provide business solutions and transformation.
Taking all the data that IT can get, and transforming into a format that is easy to digest and understand, is absolutely critical and the first step to building the relationships and the partnerships. Partnerships enable business leaders to get away from thinking of IT as a commodity. When executives look at IT leaders as merely a tool for the business it limits the IT departments’ effectiveness and the scope of service they are able to provide. It also limits the business because IT never gets to challenge perceptions of how the IT department runs. IT departments are just more effective when they are a true partner in the business and making strategic decisions.
Help Prioritize Transformation Goals
I need technology
I need a tool
I need a cloud environment to spin this up
IT departments are consistently having to deal with, navigate, and prioritize requests from customers as they continually receive requests based on perceived needs. Far too often individual departments within a business, with their own budgets, are competing against each other. IT departments can assist businesses with transformation goals by following the valuable tactic of asking ‘why’ when presented with requests.
- What is the problem you are really trying to solve?
- What are you really trying to do?
- What is the real goal?
Executives or various departments may come to IT with a tool that they think they want, but often they haven’t considered all the possibilities. IT can help them take a step back. Talking about what the real problem is, rather than honing in on a particular tool, helps everyone involved make smarter choices, leads to better questions, and ultimately helps IT deliver better solutions.
Expanding the focus of these discussions with counterparts in other departments also assists with aligning strategic initiatives for the business with technology initiatives, and prioritizes goals, but it begins with IT departments being invited to participate in the larger conversations.
Create Synergies Across Teams and Stakeholders
IT departments need to be able to provide teams and stakeholders with credible strategic solutions based on data transparency across tools and systems. With data transparency, IT leaders can
- quickly identify events or ongoing issues
- investigate them
- take proactive action
Then they can go back to the other departments, letting the business as a whole know what’s going on so changes can be prioritized. In order for stakeholders to rely on IT to make these strategic decisions there needs to be trust, and trust is often rooted in a single version of the truth when it comes to data. Data is extremely important for every decision that a business makes.
In the past gathering data often involved a lengthy and labor-intensive effort of manual processes, putting all the data into a spreadsheet, and then additional time spent analyzing. Some IT departments made large investments in expensive tools that turned out not to be as agile as needed and were still too time intensive. Visual One simplifies that process, delivering an agnostic visual data analysis that shows up weekly in your inbox. This analysis provides IT leaders with insight across data silos as well as early detection of failures or problems.
With efficient and reliable tools that enable transparency and data confidence, IT departments can provide immediate reports to leadership. With better data, IT leaders can ask better questions, the kind of questions that ultimately help businesses conserve capital. Looking at performance data IT leaders can ask if an upgrade is really needed, or if data could be moved from a more expensive storage setting to less expensive storage.
Tools are empowering. With more insight, IT departments can be more proactive, forecasting months in advance and shifting consumption models as needed. Forecasting and trending helps IT departments to reduce the amount of effort required to support end-users. First, IT leaders know what is happening in the environment and have the ability to prevent bad results from occurring in the first place. Second, IT leaders can more quickly identify the root cause causing the problem.
This efficiency helps IT leaders to take their focus from the day to day issues and gives them time and space to think about larger issues and trends that are driving the business and ultimately navigate to more cost-effective solutions.
IT Brings Business Solutions
Trust is paramount to business transformation. With a single version of the truth in regards to storage and utilization at their fingertips, IT departments can have direct conversations about what is happening in the environments, and stakeholders know precisely what they are talking about. Visual One provides the tools that allow IT departments to be expected and dependable. This information makes relationships stronger, deepening elements of trust and partnership.
By looking at technology from a business perspective, along with clearly articulating where IT aligns with business initiatives, IT leaders can provide executives with business solutions and not just IT services. Armed with efficient tools that enable data transparency and reliable insights. IT leaders are prepared to provide the strategic leadership they were hired to deliver, driving business transformation.
With the right insights, IT leaders can help businesses adopt a data-driven approach to transformation. Visual One believes IT executives should be equipped with efficient and reliable tools that enable the transparency and data confidence required to bring sound strategic recommendations and provide the IT excellence these leaders were hired to deliver. Schedule a demo to talk to a Visual One data expert.
Key Takeaways
- Business transformation occurs within a company’s own internal processes.
- IT can be a driving force for this transformation by providing data transparency.
- With the right insights, IT leaders can help businesses adopt a data-driven approach to transformation.
- Visual One believes IT executives should be equipped with efficient and reliable tools that enable data transparency.
