Is Your IT Getting in the Way of Your Business?

Many have been operating in a lean mode for quite a while and with declining resources, both from budget and personnel perspectives, IT is oftentimes back-benched for other priorities. However some leaders look into leveraging IT for productivity gains though it is also challenging to get the numbers to add up. How do you rationalise the IT spend for your organisation during tough times knowing things may only get tougher?

In comes IT Service Management (ITSM) which is usually the buzz word that many IT solutions throw out but what does it really mean? Most importantly, what does it mean to you as a senior leader, executive or sole proprietor to your organisation? Incident, Problem and Change are some of the functions under ITSM but how do these help you and your organisation? Have you heard of IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)? More confusion setting in?

Then comes the latest kid on the block, Gen AI or Generative Artificial Intelligence. How does this affect your organisation and how you run it? What can it do for you or will it be something that will give you more problems?

For us folks senior enough, we do recall in the past when;

• Computers started appearing in the workplace
• When Spreadsheets and Word Processors replaced the pen and paper
• When the first mobile phone got on our hands
• When the first iPhone was launched

All these innovations, and more, brought a lot of concerns to many whilst providing undeniable benefits at the same time. Innovational impacts are cyclical in nature and the ramp up times are becoming much lesser with increasing outreach due to other emerging technologies as well. So, Yes, there will be job losses and businesses will shutter but other businesses will emerge and thrive or pivot to take advantage of these but what about your business?

Do you look at all of these with discernment and are at a loss of what to do, when to do it and how to get it done? It is good first steps that you undertake the task to understand how these impact you but this is also taking you away from the reason why you are in your business in the first place.

What I tend to consider at the foremost is that, unless you are in an IT business, you should remember that IT provides you with “tools” to aide you in your business and not your business conforms to IT when that is not your business at all. You should learn to wield it as a Samurai masters his katana to defend his lord but at the core of it all, you should still recognise that it is just a tool or a better katana and never deny your identity as a Samurai.

So the question is, is your IT getting in the way of your business? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or DM me for a confidential discussion.

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