Can IT really create competitive advantage?

As businesses, we are tuned to measure success, and return on investment, in terms of monetary value. Although this creates a quantifiable basis for comparison, value cannot always be correlated directly to financial standings.

Perception and enablement may be difficult to measure, however I believe it will be the variance that determines competitive advantage by defining a business’ ability to nurture productive, agile and lucrative workforces – and as we know, the biggest asset to a successful business is its people.

Perception is powerful; behind every single buying decision that we make – both in our consumer and business realms. For this very reason, it is crucial to business success; how customers, prospects, and to an extent, competitors, perceive our brand, our service, and ultimately the value we deliver them. But equally as important is how the employees within the business are empowered and enabled to deliver against this.

The consumerisation of IT has meant that users are driving the requirements for how they want to work – mostly steered through their own experience with devices, applications and tools in their consumer lives. This provides a huge opportunity for a business to save money and increase business agility whilst also improving levels of employee productivity. However, naturally, a precedent is set, which delineates user expectations about what is acceptable in terms of experience.

With many of us striving to achieve the nirvana of mobility, and the ability to work from anywhere – how many of us can say this is a reality? How native is the user experience? Do you have access to mobile workspaces spanning mobile, applications, web, data, file sharing, collaboration, with secure mobile accessibility from any device, from anywhere? And equally as important, can control be maintained from IT at both application and device level without compromising the data and applications?

A notable and common perception that is changing in business today is centred on our own perception of IT enablement. IT has gone from being the business blocker and the “no people” to the enabler and the “yes people.” But why is this?

Previously, the CTO has fallen victim to perception themselves – with many end users seeing IT teams as hindering not helping, by stopping, blocking, preventing and locking down everything instead of mirroring environments, expectations, and decisions that end users make in their consumer lives.

Perhaps such control is driven by a suppressed fear of ‘perceived’ risk regarding their role in the future. A fear that their role, which may have traditionally been centred on creating and maintaining ‘traditional’ enterprise IT environments centred on security, will be dissolved, meaning that they instead facilitate and manage stakeholders to fulfil this element of their role through outsourcing.

However, the CTO’s and respective IT teams’ role has changed – having evolved from tactical to strategic. After all, mobile working is not just a security problem for IT; it is the modern day reality of the business world. The CTO’s role is now centred on meeting the needs of the business and enabling staff – managing all of the demands and devices that come with it.

So has the issue of security disappeared? No, however with solutions like ours, security is now a prerequisite – whether it be 256bit encryption or two point authentication – security is a given; allowing businesses to focus on what matters – meeting the needs of the user, and not the provider.

An article which I read recently from the Harvard Business Review, predicted that IT would soon no longer be relevant to competitive advantage. I disagree. Whilst admittedly, many of the themes within the article are true – IT has in some cases become a commodity and any business has the same level of accessibility to enterprise-grade IT – what it failed to ‘value’ is the role that IT has in enabling people within our businesses.

We all experience gadget envy in our personal lives and this is very evident in the business world too. Two friends can meet for lunch both working at different organisations, an iPad appears and they send a few quick emails. This activates a thought process which could lead to a desire to move jobs where you can be more enabled.

User enablement is core to a successful business. As an end user, perception is a direct reflection; an ROI and measurement of success of our ability to thrive in a mobile world.

By aligning the needs of users along with the strategic role of the CTO and IT department, we start to see enabled users and many businesses with CEOs from IT rather than finance.

Users will thrive in productivity, businesses gain from increased agility and IT leaders will be perceived as innovators and strategists. After all, ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change’.

Many of my blogs feature ideas around working from anywhere. Progressive ways of working can provide competitive advantage if implemented correctly within your business strategy. The British Computer Society (BCS) has invited Alternative to do a presentation on whether it is actually possible to ‘Work from Anywhere’ – you can join us on the day by registering here.