The issue of how best to align IT with the business and improve the perception of the IT function was the main talking point at a roundtable event hosted by management software vendor Touchpaper last month.

A recent survey by Touchpaper found that 82 per cent of IT professionals felt that their inability to demonstrate how technology contributes to business success reduced their budget and engendered a poor internal perception. Nearly 75 per cent said the inability to show business value was hindering their influence in the boardroom.

Less than half of respondents said they had key performance indicators (KPIs) in place to measure how IT can support business objectives. But Mike Stops, global service centre development manager at glass maker Pilkington, argued KPIs alone will not solve IT managers’ problems.

“You have to be really careful and select secondary or even tertiary measures to ensure you’re actually doing it to improve quality and not measuring for measuring’s sake,” Stops added.

Chris Robinson, IT director of construction giant Davis Langdon, argued that balanced scorecards have helped him measure and make a case for IT’s contribution to the business. “They help to measure the tangible numbers against the less tangible, such as ‘How do my customers feel about this?’” he said.

In addition to measuring IT performance, Stops recommended IT directors “build a legend” by highlighting their IT success stories, to gain influence in the boardroom.
“If you can demonstrate business leadership, people will talk to you round the table. But if talk about technology you’ll probably [lose their attention],” Stops argued. “Most chief information officers should be thinking about influence ­ when people see you as a safe pair of hands who can get the job done outside your remit, you’ll get respect.”

Robinson added that senior IT decision makers can often lose touch with emerging technologies that might give the business a competitive advantage and reflect well on IT, so regular dialogue with the rest of the IT staff is essential.

At a separate user event hosted by IT service management (ITSM) tools vendor Axios Systems, delegates debated how a service-centric approach to IT delivery could help to bridge divisions between IT and the business.

Dave Rawcliffe, IT service delivery manager at insurers NFU Mutual, argued that a service management approach ensures users get what they actually need, rather than what IT thinks they need. He added that the firm’s service desk generates reports and feedback forms to enable the team to demonstrate its value to senior management.

“The service desk enables the IT department to stay close to customers within the business,” Rawcliffe explained. “NFU Mutual’s business model was based on the philosophy of staying close to our customers and we extended that to our internal customers.”