Here's what SAP had to say the other day:
“IT executives in Canada recognize the growing sophistication and capabilities of today’s IT and business software, and are using it to competitive advantage to drive innovation in their businesses and set up their companies for growth,” said Robert Courteau, president and managing director, SAP Canada.
Baloney. IT is hated now more than ever, and in many cases for good reason. We're slow, expensive, cumbersome and in my opinion don't generally drive innovation -- we stifle it.
We keep systems around far too long for fear of alienating the business. We build highly complex technically (but not business process wise) integrated systems that are hard to upgrade or scale. We don't build for businesses. We build for IT.
Here's what the Globe and Mail had to say about it:
SAP cites an Ipsos-Reid survey of "Canada's leading IT executives" who say they believe "IT has a crucial role to play in enabling innovation." But in examining the evidence for such an assertion, the claim seems subjective.
Survey results do show that 51 per cent of 133 respondents ranked business innovation among the top three areas of greatest positive impact from IT. On the surface, that result may seem significant, but consider how other attributes were ranked.
Operational efficiency as an area of positive impact, for example, ranked in the top three for 78 per cent of respondents, while business productivity was cited by 71 per cent.
The telling point may be what respondents ranked as the top benefit of IT. Operational efficiency was voted No. 1 by 36 per cent and business productivity came out on top in the minds of 26 per cent.
By comparison, business innovation ranked No. 1 with only 6 per cent of respondents -- behind the IT benefit of mobilizing work forces, which was cited by 8 per cent. And yet, SAP's press release announced the survey results under the headline: "Canada's Road to Business Growth and Innovation Runs Through the IT Department."
And Carr chimes in:
There was a time, not so long ago, when the marketing of information technology was built on the myth that buying the latest software and hardware was a good way for a company to gain a competitive advantage. Install our gizmo and leave the competition in the dust! That pitch hasn't gone away entirely, but it's lost its punch. Nobody quite believes it anymore. In its place, though, has come a new and much fuzzier claim: IT is an "enabler" or a "catalyst" for corporate innovation. Install our latest gizmo and watch your people get all creative!
Amen, brother. Some good responses from others in Carr's blog:
Upper management must become more comfortable and knowledgable with technology so that they can provide direction, vision, and clear goals as well as limits for IT. Until then, IT will best serve IT...
Ask any senior manager what the major obstacles to corporate change are and IT is always mentioned as one of the key culprits. Far from acting as a catalyst, many IT systems act as organizational formaldehyde, pickling and preserving structures and procedures long past their useful life...
In my experience, most senior executives would trade a pound of IT innovation for a few ounces of good solid IT execution...
The real reality is a mind shifting (because it never happened before in large Co's) teamwork between developers and business designers. The key here is NO business requirement document, and no project managers. Its about conversation (emphasis mine)...
Gee, that sounds a lot like the Agile Manifesto, doesn't it?
A revolution is coming, and I want to help give birth to it. IT's basic services -- email/task management/scheduling, document/spreadsheet processing, data management, and even ERP systems are becoming commodities. Not just regular commodities, mind you, but perfect commodities. Perfect as in almost free.
Does this mean we in IT will be out of a job? Not at all -- to me this is a similar notion to the offshoring debate.
Look, you can't stop OSS and web services and the net and everything that's driving down the cost of the core services. So don't try. Instead, we can finally become more embedded within the business to actually enable solutions, not be a problem the business needs to work around. Why is IT such a systemic problem? Check this out:
...we have the quintessential IT bottom line: in IT failure succeeds and success fails (emphasis mine).
[The CIOs] career wouldn't be helped by becoming the guy who fixes the phones: that guy's systems work, and nobody knows who he is. What [The CIOs] career needs is bigger budgets, more staff, face time with the bosses - things he gets by being the photocopier guy: that guy's systems fail a lot, but he's known and liked by everyone because he's always there to shoulder the load when crisises hit. In an industry defined by backpackers, the guy with the truck can't be seen - and doesn't get promoted.
Bottom line, why do big organizations like Ontario's department of Social Services lurch from one hundred million dollar IT failure to another? because the pressure driving industry evolution is the pressure to build careers and make money, while the top managers whose job it is to prune off evolutionary dead ends, lack both the knowledge and the courage needed to do it.
What he's saying, essentially, is this: If IT doesn't overspend, their budgets get cut next year. If the budgets get cut then people lose their jobs and upper IT management careers suffer because they don't have high headcounts and budgets. So IT leaders must overspend and under deliver so that their careers can grow. So the business is essentially rewarding IT's failure, as long as IT is nice and apologetic about it. And offers good reason why the budget has to go up next year to fix it.
This has got to stop. We have to partner with the business, not burden it...
http://www.sap.com/canada/company/press/press.epx?pressid=7169
