The game has changed. As CIOs and IT professionals, we were comfortable with controlling the environment; talking in ERP terms and timelines; and in using a liquidation/unit cost financial model to manage our operations. However, the landscape has changed and our business users expect and need IT’s help in driving agility, intelligence, innovation and value. To remain relevant, CIOs and IT organizations must reenergize IT.
On October 6th, EMC celebrated the tremendous strides the company is making to dramatically enhance our Total Customer Experience (TCE) globally. Like other EMC customers, my team and I wholeheartedly embraced cloud and big data analytics, as well as mobile and social technologies to innovate and propel us forward. That said, building on my blog earlier this year, I believe that digitization is the key to improving TCE and transforming how businesses run for the future.
Technology plays a significant role in digitizing processes, but it is just one piece of the puzzle. We must first change our overall approach. Unlike traditional tight controls and restrictive IT systems, a digitally transformed IT environment makes it easier for business to engage with customers. By leveraging digitization and automation, we differentiate our business; deliver operational efficiencies and world-class customer experiences; and empower employees with the flexibility to cut through bureaucracy.
At EMC, we optimize our own IT processes and simplify, automate and digitize our service catalog and a variety of services for our users. For example, to help EMC’s engineering and DevOps communities focus less on the underlying technology and more on their task at hand, we automated the provisioning and delivery of two new services – Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service. By introducing Infrastructure as a Service, we decreased unit costs by 24% and now deliver infrastructure much faster. These services are just scratching the surface of what we can do to make our users more efficient and productive.
Additionally, to move to this more contemporary, elastic and on demand IT model, EMC’s IT organization realigned our organization to have a stronger partnership and seat at the table with the company’s lines of business. As a trusted advisor, our leaders must not only leverage robust automated processes to deliver programs on time and on budget, but have a deep understanding of the business unit’s needs to help, or in some cases, lead its digital transformation.
The bottom line – the traditional IT pace and approach is obstructing success and will make old ways of operating IT irrelevant. To move at the speed of business, CIOs and IT professionals must anticipate business needs; simplify and lean out redundant process; embrace the latest technologies; and automate and digitize as much as possible. Not only will this transform how IT organizations are run and improve the total customer experience internally, but it will have a long lasting positive impact for our companies.
