For modern IT managers, technology is no longer the first priority. Their job is now about building relationships with suppliers and service providers – and maintaining them.
Being an effective IT manager used to be all about ensuring that users got their passwords reset quickly, applications installed, laptops reallocated, core business applications patched, and so on. But in today’s world of cloud – enabled digital transformation, the job has taken on a very different tone.
Technological prowess may be assumed, but business relationships now drive the role – and facilitate the management of everyday tasks such as budgets, ROI measures, and executive relationships. Inventories of key IT-manager skills typically prioritise business-like ‘soft skills’ such as team management, decision making, strategic thinking, negotiating, communication, and time management.
Cloud-based applications and infrastructure are now a commonly recognised part of corporate strategy, but most companies in Australian and New Zealand are only just getting started implementing them: IDC’s latest Cloud MaturityScape Benchmark study found that 68.7 percent of ANZ businesses are still in the early stages of cloud transformation, known ‘ad hoc’ and ‘opportunistic’.
This early maturity – which is still well ahead of counterparts in other APAC countries – gives IT managers a significant imperative to reinvent themselves. IDC’s higher levels of maturity – repeatable, managed, and optimised – require the execution of initiatives such as repeatable cloud processes that boost business process speed and quality; and the introduction of industrial-grade infrastructure and resources. The highest, ‘optimised’ stage – achieved by just 0.7 percent of companies, according to IDC, involves “business innovation and transformation through organisation and partners, with clear understanding of cost and value.”
Drive transformation maturity
Soft skills are more important than ever. HR leaders were asked how their relationship with technologists had changed in the past three years.
They said:
- 78% are more focused on finding technology employees with strong soft skills
- 61% said technology roles are either somewhat or extremely more difficult to hire for than other positions
- 67% said they withheld a job offer to an otherwise qualified technology candidate solely because that candidate lacked the right soft skills
- 43% said technology roles are harder to fill because candidates lack strong soft skills
This is where the rubber hits the road for the modern IT manager. Delivering a high degree of innovation and transformation requires the development of mutually beneficial relationships with outside parties that can help companies build the momentum they need to progress their cloud – transformation initiatives.
This means delivering and supporting in-house technology through ever-tighter relationships with cloud service providers (CSPs) and managed service providers (MSPs).
To make those relationships work for the business, IT managers must compare and choose CSPs and MSPs with the right capabilities – as well as the right level of potential cost savings. These savings typically average 60 percent less than OEM list prices and can range up to 95 percent cheaper.
You may form a relationship with an outside service provider because of the cost savings, but you’ll stay for the strategic value of providers like Interactive, which has expanded its remit with a broader multi-cloud approach that helps match customer requirements with the cloud services that best enable them.
This approach naturally complements Interactive’s expertise in core infrastructure management, such as hardware maintenance (HWM) services that provide peace of mind by delivering consistent service levels across all kinds of on-premises equipment.
Capability & Performance
Cloud transformations become easier with a capable broker as intermediary. Yet capabilities are only part of the relationship. The modern IT manager must also develop processes for monitoring their performance against transformation targets. These processes must then be knit into the fabric of the business, so that technological initiatives are seen less as add-ons to the core business – but as being the business.
This can often come as news to conventional businesspeople, but proactive IT managers must speak the language of their executives in order to get everyone on the same page.
Doing this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea – and recent research suggests that technologists’ ability to engage the business is being compromised by companies’ own internal shortcomings.
People with the right skills to be modern IT managers are harder to come by, harder to develop, and harder to keep. Paradoxically, a recent West Monroe Partners study found, many companies hire technologists to drive a business-driven transformation but fail to check whether they have the necessary ‘soft’ business skills to execute it.
The lack of due diligence early on means these same companies often fail to educate and upskill those technologists with the business skills they need – with predictable results. Some 71 percent of survey respondents blamed project delays on business and IT collaboration issues. 43 percent said these issues had caused the quality of work to decrease and 33 percent reported missed deadlines as a result.
Business people were asked about the consequences of poor collaboration with technologists.
Here’s what they said had happened in the past:
- 71% delayed or prolonged projects
- 43% Lower quality of work
- 33% Missed deadlines
- Show them how to be effective
IT managers must collaborate with the business. Eliminating the missteps between business and IT units is a recurring theme in technology practice, but the modern IT manager cannot afford to allow a transformation effort to be capsized by poor communication.
Assertiveness will go a long way here. Modern IT managers need to be more proactive about their role within the business, the resources they need to fulfil that role, and the support they have to get it done. They need to build multi-disciplinary teams that span business and IT roles, both inside the organisation and within external service providers.
They also need to:
- Use real-time visualisations to keep business leaders in the loop about transformation process
- Know when to bring in outside help or outsource projects to CSPs and MSPs with specialised skills
- Take the initiative to run cross-business unit projects that unite the business around a common, technology-enabled goal
By asserting themselves and their goals, then tapping into enabling strategies such as efficient outsourcing, the modern IT manager can ultimately become both an expert in cost efficiencies and a driver for real and productive organisational change. As effective transformation becomes a lead indicator for ongoing competitiveness, success in the role will require nothing less.
