IT Service Week

Yesterday CBS announced that it as agreed to buy CNET for $1.8 billion dollars or $11.50 a share. I heard a number of the stock analysts regard the deal as bad for CBS. They were arguing that CBS should have purchased a YouTube-like company that engages in online video rather than a conglomerate of techie review websites. I disagree. As I was mentioning in my last blog, Microsoft Looks Past Yahoo, I mentioned that the next hot buys for those companies looking to get into the advertising space will be internet content providers. CNET is one of the premiere content providers available on the internet. It has been around for quite sometime and has developed a large loyal base that trust CNET for news and reviews on products.

When CBS buys CNET they aren’t just getting a bunch of unique hits from new users of the site, they are getting a loyal fan base that has used the network of sites for 5-10 years. Content providers provide a medium for online advertising that surpasses the search advertising providers. Search advertisers focus on placement of banner sized ads whereas a content site maintains a visitor for a longer exposure and advertisements can be embedded within the articles or as splash pages. CNET was bought by CBS and more companies in the space are certainly left to be bought.

The buzz going around on enterprise blogs this week has been about this weekend’s retraction of the deal that would give Microsoft the popular search engine at $33 dollars a share. Today a few analysts discussed the deal on CNBC’s Squawk Box and 2 of the 3 analysts stated that Microsoft will move on past the Yahoo deal and look for other purchase opportunities.

A recent Tech Crunch Blog Article stated that AOL might be on the map for software giant. The article goes on to tell that Time Warner is looking to sell the ISP and that the corporate culture of AOL would match Microsoft’s culture better than Yahoo. I argued in a comment that Ask.com might return a better return on investment for Microsoft. Ask has a Search Advertising department that has not been able to compete with Google or Yahoo, however, many unique hits utilize the search engine along with it’s content network on the About.com network. I feel that Microsoft should make a move to acquire not only just a search engine but also a content network that will engage the audience and produce better return for search advertisers. AOL would make a good fit as well, however, Microsoft may have to pay a premium.

Here is a Google Gotcha I found out today on the Natural Search Blog.

Go to Google.
Type in Chuck Norris in the Search Page
Hit I’m Feeling Lucky.

In the April 2008 edition of Harvard Business Review, David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad, wrote an 11-page article entitled “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?” While the article specifically focuses on business strategy and decisions that the CEO makes to give the enterprise an overall strategy, some of the concepts could be applied to IT Strategy for an enterprise’s technology department.

“Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can’t, neither can anyone else,” states the article and follows as their main argument. The article then compares how the CEO of Edward Jones, a St. Louis based Brokerage, uses a simple strategy that all 37,000 employees can understand and articulate to their customers. By using a simple strategy that is under 35 words in length the company has grown to become the fourth largest brokerage firm in the United States and they are on the Fortune’s list of top companies to work for in 2008.

Some of the problems are:

• Mixed Direction from Executive Management
• Customers are frustrated with company not clearly defining their purpose statement
• Should we not cut the price to maintain our strong brand image at the risk of losing the customer

I found these problems resemble many of the same issues the CIO faces when developing an IT Strategy. Often IT Strategies are loosely based on best practices such as ITIL but are too complex for every IT employee to understand and articulate to their customers, the business.

Often IT Strategies are complied of things such as we desire high availability, low total cost of ownership, or being on the forefront of technological systems. With 3-4 different strategies rolled into one canvas, employees from the help desk to the server rack are sent in multiple avenues of direction and are not as productive as expected.

This strategy begins by building a simple purpose statement. If a strategy has a disorganized purpose statement or something so complex that not all of your employees can understand the mission, then it would not matter if you had an IT budget the size of the US Fiscal budget; your strategy will fail.

Strategy begins in each Department

But building an IT Strategy can also take place at the departmental level. Of course, IT may have an overall strategy to supporting the business, it helps to define exactly how each IT unit aligns it’s services to the business. The similarity would be, “Our company provides consumers with low-cost bicycles and high quality customer service.” as the Company Strategy and then the marketing department would have their own strategy, “Our marketing department provides the business with a positive brand image demonstrating our exceptionally skilled customer service staff and low-cost in the marketplace.” You notice that the marketing department strategy aligns with the business strategy. Then further within the marketing department they have a research team that provides market research on the pricing of bicycles sold in the United States by competitors. This department would have a strategy as such, “To provide accurate reflection and research to the business that maintains our brand image of being a low-cost provider of bicycles.” Again, the statement is kept simple but also aligns itself to the company strategy.

Building an IT Purpose Statement

When it comes time to develop a strategy statement, compile a list of what are the most important purposes that IT serves for the business that you are supporting. After you have compiled the list, cut the list down to the three main purposes and these will make up your reason the business NEEDS technology to accomplish it’s business goals.

For our example we are going to use an e-commerce company that sells bicycles online.

Company Statement: “Provide a low-cost bicycle to budget cautious consumers.”

IT Operations Department: “Monitor, maintain, and supply high availability for the high volume of low-cost bicycle sales by our business.”

Everyone in the department should fully understand the strategy and be able to articulate the strategy to their customers in the business. This is where internal branding comes in and can help get your message out to the business users.

With a clear purpose statement, your department will be on the first step to developing a strong strategy that can
better support the business.

I recently saw a Question posted on LinkedIn called Where will IT be in 5-10 years?. This question was then followed by a series of questions about the future of COBOL to off-shoring IT. I’m posting my responses to IT Service Week since I feel some of the outlook would be of interest to technology managers looking to the future of IT.

What new roles will become important?
Roles that define new innovative ways of achieving business results in creating sales revenue and cost savings in labor. Roles that align technology with business.

What roles will fade away?
Anything that can be automated will be automated. Roles such as setting up accounts, troubleshooting simple issues, and manual process roles will be either eliminated or fading away. Individuals in these roles will be re-allocated to roles that manage this automation or improve the automation. What once took a team of 9 to complete will now take 1 person to manage.

Will COBOL still be here?
Yes… Legacy systems take many years to move off of… but technology managers should not focus on the technology used but the return on investment of that technology. If a system built in COBOL is still delivering a return higher than the cost of not developing a new system then why should they get rid of COBOL?

Will Project Management be the same?
I think a higher responsibility will be placed on Project Managers to not only deliver projects on time and within budget but they will also have to start showing the value of their projects to VPs and the Executives making budget decisions.

What will methods, software, hardware lookk like?
Hardware that is cheaper than PB sandwiches and Software that is more expensive than caviar…. We will eventually move off of a software based system and more of a service oriented architecture. Ironic…. but Citrix Services and Windows Terminal Services was ahead of its time. The cost reduction of NOT having to deploy installed services to individual desktops will be a great reduction in cost. As bandwidth and disk space becomes cheaper and security concerns increase…. it may benefit some organizations to move their infrastructure to a terminal services based solution in some areas (i.e. help desk, support roles, admin roles, etc)

Will Americans carve out a niche or will all IT be offshored?
Certain tasks such as monitoring systems and maintaining databases could be off shored, but roles that require customer service or knowledge of American business operations will be very costly to offshore.

What positive observations/predictions do you have to share?

We are increasingly looking for new ways to standardize systems and processes. This is quite different than back in previous decades where everyone wanted to build their own system and their own “better” way of doing things…. now everyone wants to build interoperability between technologies. To get ahead in technology in the coming decades will mean that your organization is an information contributor and not one to suppress information.

The need to understand how your organization’s business works are the keys to your success. This statement would hold valid truths from the administrative assistant up to the CIO. Everyone in the IT organization MUST understand what it’s role in the business environment in order for that organization to be effectively implementing IT across the enterprise. I recently came across a slide show on CIOInsight that discusses the Top 10 Management Concerns of CIOs. In this report they interviewed CIOs from 112 different companies to find out what most CIOs are concerned about in the coming year. The top three rounded out at Recruitment being first, Aligning Business with IT as second, and Building Business Skills as the third most important concern for CIOs. This means that companies are facing an enormous demand for IT talented professionals that not only understand the nuts and bolts of IT Services but also how IT Services can provide value to the Business.

1. Understand Your Industry
Understanding the industry of your business is crucial to understanding how an IT department can provide services to it’s business users. Subscribe to trade journals, read competitors websites, download how-to articles, and make certain you have read the wikipedia article relating to your industry at least twice. A great source for anything about everything is About.com. About features micro sites about particular topics with real people with subject knowledge in the various category. From understanding Supply Chain Management to the latest widget you can build with PHP is available on About. Trade journals are great also. I subscribe to a number of them to really understand how each industry is using technology in their own worlds. A couple I would recommend would be GovTech, for government related industries, and QSR Magazine for the Quick Service Restaurant Industry. Yahoo has a great directory to help you out if you are uncertain which trade magazines fit your industry.

2. Develop Business Skills Developing those functional business skills taught in college to Business Majors make you much more effective in your delivery of IT Services. Think of how many project decisions are won and lost based on a technical presentation of data? How many promotions are given based on the word smith of a performance review? How much publicity can you drive for your project across lines of business? Developing the skills of negotiation, presentation, and business writing will most certainly help your campaign. If you don’t have those skills try enrolling into an MBA program at a University or taking a course at a local community college. Toastmasters International is also a GREAT way to build your presentation skillset. No one will force you to take these courses, you will have to put in the effort on your own.

3. Take on projects that allow you to interact with Non-IT users When we deal with people that speak the same IT jargon as we do we tend to lose track of reality. Every chance you get to present a technology topic to someone non-IT is another step to developing great business savy skills. A number of times it helps to completely explain your mission to a neutral party. When I took a Geography course back in my freshman year of college, the professor stated that the best way to know that YOU understand a topic is to be able to explain it to someone not in the course. The same holds true in the IT world. If you can explain how a database works with storing a restaurant’s financial data you are one step ahead of the curve. There is no real course to obtain these skills other than experience. Get on projects that allow you to interact with Accounting, HR, Marketing, and other departments. Prepare an elevator pitch about how your role on an IT project impacts your business, industry, and the world.

Understanding how your functions as an IT Professional effect the Business on a minute-by-minute basis will greatly effect your career and bring some job satisfaction. So the next time you are at the bookstore pick up a copy of the latest trade journal and get the move on. The time to align business and IT is now.

LOS ANGELES With a growing need for syndicated web content detailing IT Service Management news around the globe has been presented with yet another solution.  IT Service Week (www.itserviceweek.com) kicks off it’s grand opening on the 24th of January, 2008.  IT Service Week is dedicated to provide readers with the current week’s round up of news relating to IT Service Management, Service Level Management, Knowledge Management, CMDB, and ITIL related content.