House of cards: How core IT operations have devolved—and how teams can regain control

The current IT landscape is one of countless distractions. With so many new initiatives and functions vying for our attention, it's easy to lose sight of the basics—the foundational principles we need to embrace to successfully navigate the complexities that come along with implementing new software or scaling GenAI initiatives.

Imagine your technology team was told by senior leadership tomorrow that scaling GenAI across the organization was the top priority and handed an eight-figure budget to get it done [within three years], would your organization be able to do it?

Chances are, your confidence in executing this new technology would depend on the strength of your current technology environment. Operational deficits in the core are what drive complexity, costs and inefficiency and make it difficult to draw the expected ROI from new tech investments and transformation initiatives. Unfortunately, many organizations may not be as prepared as they should be.

For example, let’s consider what happens when your organization wants to integrate a new feature in a software application? Does it set off a chain reaction that goes something like this:

• The new feature is only available on the latest version of the software, so the team must first update the application.
• The new version of software is not compatible with other software applications, most of which are also outdated. These apps also need to be updated before rolling out the new feature.
• The new feature is not supported by an obsolete tool, so plans must be made to sunset that solution or find a workaround.
• The application is not supported by the existing identity structure, so the IT team must create a one-off profile, which adds more complexity and fragmentation to the environment and potentially creates confusion among users.?

If that scenario sounds familiar, it’s only because it’s a common occurrence among enterprise IT organizations. As teams add new tools and features, the environment becomes more complex and more difficult to manage, making it all but impossible to execute an advanced technology at scale, like GenAI.

At the same time, limited resources and a heavy fixation on huge transformation initiatives and cost optimization means that some core technology tasks have fallen by the wayside. In fact, some organizations are deliberately putting off system updates or the introduction of new features simply because they’re concerned about upsetting what has become a very delicate system.

And that’s a big problem because the IT environment should resemble a well-oiled machine—not a house of cards.

So what’s standing in the way of success? For many IT organizations, the key to a brighter future isn’t new technologies, moving to the cloud, or even more resources and bigger budgets. It’s getting back to basics—improving the core so that the IT organization can thrive. In this post, I explore eight areas of core IT operations that are instrumental to the overall health of the organization and the success of transformation programs.

8 recommendations to improve core IT operations

What happens when you get the core right

As companies place more and more emphasis on the so-called “big bang” transformation plan elements coupled with further squeezing budgets for “cost out,” foundational IT activities like the ones mentioned above tend to fall lower and lower on the priority list. This leads to cracks, gaps and clutter in the IT foundation that hamper transformation initiatives and make it more difficult to perform day-to-day tasks.

On the other hand, organizations that focus on improving core IT operations are likely to set off a new chain reaction for their function and the business as a whole:

• Overall speed and efficiency improves.
• Productivity goes up.
• Existing resources are optimized.
• Teams can more quickly and easily utilize new features as they become available.
• New technology initiatives become less costly and complex to implement.

While it can be difficult to allocate the budget, time, or energy to work on these activities, perhaps this is exactly what needs happen.

Do you really want to continue to build on an unstable foundation and risk destruction of your organization’s efforts to drive growth? That scenario should be motivation enough to get every house in order.

We, at 高知特 Cognizant , are always happy to help as well as we’ve worked with many clients to help address this exact problem. If this sounds familiar, I’d love to hear from you and get your perspective.