We’ve been thinking a lot about
innovation lately and how businesses are struggling to be
simultaneously innovative and profitable. Yesterday
we talked about how some shops have tried to solve this problem by
trying to outsource innovation, yet often failing miserably in the
process.
Companies outsource either to save money or to make
money. Companies need innovation to stay competitive and show
profitability. So it seems that it all goes back to the money.
What
if IT were to change the way it looks at its technology investments and
began to plan upgrades and innovation around general profitability?
Well, Marriott has done just that:
“Marriott has a three- to five-year technology roadmap
that the IT department uses as a tool for coordinating IT investments.
But the company’s IT strategy, says CIO Carl
Wilson, is the same as its business strategy. That is, the company’s
technology plan isn’t based, as so many are, on upgrade cycles to
legacy systems or vendors’ product roadmaps. It’s based on which
technology investments are going to help the company become more
profitable.” – Profitability: The IT Strategy-Corporate Innovation Link
But one of the barriers to this being instituted
is IT simply doesn’t know enough about how the company makes money.
Just as few people on the business side understand the intricacies and
challenges their IT counterparts face.
“[At Marriott] the relationship between business
strategy and IT strategy at Marriott used to be ‘rather fractured.’
What changed? ‘We spent a lot of time educating ourselves about how the
company made money.’” – Ibid
So the ability to pursue innovation effectively all goes back to communication and collaboration.
If our colleagues in business don’t understand our technical decisions
– and if we don’t get a handle on their business strategy – we might as
well be outsourcer/outsourcee working on opposite sides of the ocean.
It’s that same, recurring question: how do we start the dialog between IT and business and begin educating each other?
