I’ve been involved in a few interesting discussions around the role of IT lately, specifically where does IT fit within social business? I’ve also been to a few prospect meetings where organizations were looking to deploy social tools and strategies to either interact with customers or employees, what’s been very interesting to me is that in all of the meetings I’ve had there hasn’t been a single person from IT involved.
Now of course IT isn’t dead in fact I think it’s going to become even more crucial in the near future as integration of technologies, data, and systems becomes necessitated. However, it’s been quite amazing to see that technology and platform discussions are being had and understood without someone from IT being present. Business leaders and department managers no longer need to rely on IT professionals to get things done. Deployments are now cloud based and simple. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
The good
Since technologies can be deployed by business mangers (or employees), the barrier to get them up and running is quite low. Years ago in organizations if someone wanted a blog set up it could take weeks or months before from someone from IT could get around to the project, now anyone can launch a blog within just a few minutes without having any type of technical background. When employees have problems they can quickly turn to technology solutions which best meet their needs. So, the good news is that anyone can do it at any time in a cost effective and time effective way without dealing with the complexities of IT.
The bad
Since these tools are so easy to deploy organizations can oftentimes run into problems with too many tools being deployed by too many people or departments. It’s a bit like trying to play “whack-a-mole” with technology. What happens when one organization starts using dozens or hundreds of solutions each with it’s own data, information, processes, and users? We start to see duplication of content, lack of standardization, and basically we end up having a big technology mess (which is one of the reasons why IT is needed here). When it becomes this easy to deploy something the left hand has a hard time keep track of what the right hand is doing. Just because technologies can be deployed doesn’t mean they should. Too many solutions just ends up causing more problems and data silos within organizations.
So, what’s the best solution? Well, it’s hard to say actually, I think it’s a bit too early to tell what the best solution is and I also find that every organization has a different way of approaching their own problems (and they have their own unique problems to begin with). I suppose every approach has it’s pros and cons. Do you allow employees to deploy whatever tools they want or do you dictate/advise them on the tools that they should be using? Both can work and both can fail!
What do you think about where IT needs to fit within social business?
Yeah every organization has a different ways of approach.. Likewise IT also having that..
Aluminium Kozijnen
Our whole world now is social now..and people really need to take advantage of it..
“Black Seo Guy “Signing Off”
IT definitely must be involved – if only to simply shake their heads wirh “yes all ok”. IT can bet determine the impact to currenr infrastructure, advise to products that fit best, are on the edge of current technology, and is important they know so can track changes in network and infrastructure.
The entire company should be involved – this is not just marketing or customer support endeavor.
Any new implementation should involve IT – from at least infromational invite – they can best determine if their services are required further. Communication starts internally first.
Jacob, IT is currently at an impasse. They are seeing their rank-and-file shrink while simultaneously being required to be “business”. I just talked to a CTO friend this morning who is currently trying to get his programmers and other tech folks to come out of their shell and actually speak and share with sales, operations, customers service etc.
Having lived most of my life as a propeller-bit-head I understand why in 20th century business we had to live in the dungeons and control who and how people accessed our information; it was the businesses competitive difference. In 21st century business, everyone has access to the same stuff. I know who your customers are and I know why they do business with you and not me. But don’t think I’m not still trying to steal them away.
All of IT has to change. If I can go home and for one of my children’s school project, they need to know how many red headed union soldiers and were killed in the first six months of the American Civil War, we go to a browser and Search it. At work, it’s a different story. After I spend time looking to see if it exists in the areas I am authorized to look, I have to fill out a service request. Get my managers approval. Submit to IT who now has to add it to their fulfillment queue. I only hope is if I can get it before I forgot why I even needed it in the first place. For software, I install it at home and I deal with the consequences support. At work, I’m not allowed because my support is IT and they don’t want to deal with library or hardware conflicts because they have to support the report that I asked for earlier.
This is where IT has to change. They have to get the data and information in a state that is useful by the users through a simple interface. Search engines have a single text box usually in the middle of the screen. I type what I need and then I’m empowered to select the best answer. Why isn’t there a search engine at work, called Workle or WING, where I type some words/numbers and up pops a list of colleagues, blog entries, scorecards, metrics, spreadsheets, reports, wiki entries that I can chose as the best answer? Because we’ve spent decade’s hording data inside databases where none shall pass while we keep employees locked up inside HR designed org chart boxes where none shall collaborate. I just realized something, two non-revenue generating overhead groups that are keeping the rest of the company down.
We are living in very exciting times. If both IT and HR realize their potential opportunities with this current shift, they can be the golden children of the business. Otherwise, they will just fade away into an app.
Hi Jacob – good blog!
Among other, validates the use case for corps like Okta and Ping Identity … yet another outsourced IT services – but a mighty useful and strategic one to help reign it in and control the user management and sso needs created by so many on-premise and easy-deploy sign-up SaaS apps.
Thanks Ellen!
Always great to hear your words of wisdom
Hi George,
Thanks for the in-depth comment and for sharing your experiences. As a professional in the field, do you find that emergent enterprise collaboration tools are going to help here or do you see them as more of a burden for the IT professionals and something that they will not want to take part of. How are IT professionals currently managing their user base that is deploying their own free tools at a moments notice? No approval and no IT assistance is ever required. I’m not sure what the best solution is, perhaps you have more insight as to what a potential solution can be?
Thanks again!
Hi Darleen,
I agree there needs to be some involvement from IT, I suppose the question is how much? I’m not an IT professional so I don’t really understand how the process work from the IT side, something I’m curious to hear more about though!
Thanks for the comment
If by “IT” you mostly mean hardware and networking people, then they probably don’t need to be involved any more than any other part of the organization — or any less involved. IT brings its own strengths to the table, and shouldn’t be left out of planning or deployment.
Social business is about communication, though. When we do social media strategy plans for business, we recommend training, oversight, and policies, none of which is usually the purview of the IT department.
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Does anyone do business with ww.luxurywill.com before?
IT is now a days a sector which is completely dependent on outsourcing to the asian countries. the labor is reasonable and the time of delivery is good.This affects the local industries.
Technical recruiting is one of those IT based services which is in raise now a days.
3 Roles to be a Good Blogger