For years, everyone has talked about IT getting aligned with the business. Well, when does the conversation turn to the business getting aligned with IT?  Does “the business” have any idea what IT can do for the organization with technologies and skills they probably already own?

A couple of weeks ago, Susan Cramm’s article, “How IT-Smart is Your Organization,” in The Harvard Business Review kicked off a lively discussion about whether IT needs to get smarter about the business or whether business leaders need to be more knowledgeable about IT. The article points out that IT spends a lot of time getting itself business-smart, but not necessarily educating the business about IT.  She is on the right track when she writes:

“The promise of new, cool technology depends on IT-smart business leaders, who discover the potential in them through experimentation and application. These are learn-by-doing technologies that are not programmable by IT. Employees will ‘reprogram’ how their companies operate based on how they use these technologies. IT's job is to teach, coach, observe, and scale. Imagine the impact of having everyone in the business 10% smarter about IT? It'd do a lot more good than making everyone in IT 100% smarter about the business.”

I agree with Susan. Technology is now a crucial component of any business, big or small, and business leaders can’t afford to be disconnected from IT.  Tech-savvy business users often find ways to get more value out of technology, whether new or old, leveraging it in smart ways the developers or IT department could have never predicted.  And, in turn, IT leaders that really learn how the business is actually using that technology can more intelligently evolve their systems to support the business.

Take our Numara FootPrints service desk solution for example. It was primarily designed to streamline IT service management processes and workflows, but our customers have found many ways to apply the technology across their business, including managing functions like facilities management, human resources, enrollment tracking, and development and bug tracking.  Because their IT folks helped the business understand that many departments are providing “trackable” services to the organization and they knew they could easily adapt the underlying workflow technology, they were able to eliminate the need to spend money on additional systems to automate those departments.  When the business takes the time to learn from IT, they can really become more efficient while saving the company money.

Unfortunately, as Susan points out, it’s most likely up to IT to start this cycle. In order to begin the conversation, I suggest you learn to speak in value terms that business leaders understand.  For example, your business may not get the need for “improved PC management,” but talk in terms of the money the company can save by reducing PC power consumption, and you will get the attention of the business leaders.  (Check out our power manager calculator to estimate how much you could save.)

Take a bold approach with “the business” and let them know all the ways you can help them with tools and technologies you already have.

We recently held a live webinar featuring Kent Fuller from BCBG Max Azria.  The focus of the webinar was to share the story of BCBG’s usage of Numara FootPrints outside of the IT Service Desk. Kent spoke about the pain points he has been able to address with the Numara FootPrints product, including lack of process, lack of accountability, unsupportable ticketing system (helpstar), inability to track and report on workload, lack of cross department communication and the fact that BCBG is rapidly growing and in need of automated workflow across multiple organizational units within the company.  The reason for choosing Numara FootPrints to address the pain points was easy for Kent because the product is flexible, easy to configure, feature rich and the cost was within his minimal IT budget and most importantly, FP has built-in multi-tenant functionality which allowed him to use FP to automate workflow across departments.

BGBG uses Numara FootPrints throughout their organization for IT, Human Resources, Facilities and Maintenance and Operations.  They have over 10 workspaces configured for their various business needs and plan to add additional workspaces as needed.  In FootPrints each workspace can be unique to that department with specific workflow, escalations, users and forms.

The Change Control workspace used within the IT department provides a framework for SOX compliance, helps ensure changes occur successfully, ensures that back out plans are available, that downtime is minimal and lessons are learned when there is a problem with a particular change. 

The Point of Sale helpdesk supports all store issues ensuring they are handled in a timely manner, historical information is preserved and the store is able to service customers effectively.  The facilities and maintenance team utilizes Numara FootPrints to coordinate and track location movements and retail maintenance requests.  The team is able to ensure all moves are approved, tracked and completed on schedule.  The entire purchasing lifecycle is also tracked within a Numara FootPrints workspace.  Budget details, approvals, committee reviews and automation of the purchasing process are tracked within the workspace.  

BCBG has benefitted from implementing Numara FootPrints across multiple departments and not just within IT.  Teams are now accountable for their activities, time savings can be seen through the use of the customer self-service portal, relationships and communication has improved with customers, within and across departments.  Most importantly, the reporting functionality has helped Kent exhibit the importance of IT and IT staff.  By utilizing a single tool he is able to achieve end to end problem resolution with a much lower total cost of ownership.

With Numara FootPrints’ flexible functionality, you can define unique workspaces, each with their own processes, users and forms, to support cross departmental workflows.  Kent Fuller from BCBG Max Azria has benefitted from this and we hope you can too!

Read Kent’s answers to questions from the webinar.

SmartPlanet.com’s Andrew Nusca recently posted an interview with MAYA Design chief Mickey McManus, one of the people behind Apple’s well-designed products like the iPhone. (“Teaching people how to use innovation to make others feel smarter.”)

One of the take-aways: As we create more complex technology, it’s even more important to make it seem simple.  In fact, McManus says, “products should be so intuitive that a customer feels silly explaining to another how it works.”

That struck a chord with me, as we recently wrapped up our most intensive customer usability study to date.  We found the same holds true with technology in the workplace – whether playing Soduku on their iPhone or submitting a ticket to the service desk, people expect applications to be intuitive, fast and familiar.  If they need to refer to a set of instructions, or it takes more than a few clicks to figure it out – forget it.  They’ll find an easier way. 

According to the post, “In 2007, returned consumer electronics products was a $13.8 billion problem. If [consumers] can’t figure it out within 20 minutes, they return it.” 

Think about all those consumers who are returning products.  They’re the same people you walk by in the office every day.  So how do we, as IT professionals, stop them from “returning” (or ignoring) the systems we put in place?  We have to roll-out well-designed solutions that support the complexity of the business requirements, without sacrificing usability.  Elaborate new features and functions may offer a lot of promise, but they don’t do any good if nobody uses them. 

People don’t want to completely overhaul the way they work just to accommodate new technology.  You have to understand how they work now and offer them a tool that not only makes their life easier, but doesn’t make them feel stupid or frustrated to learn. That’s why for the latest version of Numara FootPrints, we conducted extensive motion studies across various customer groups to understand exactly how people perform every-day tasks and then designed our interface to fit the way they work, not vice-versa.  For example, we saw there were a few key fields service desk agents were constantly updating, so we added a Quick Edit feature that allows them to update those fields directly from the Home screen. 

Now I know your users are no dummies, but as McMananus points out, “Technology got faster, information exploded — but what about us? Is my brain bigger than my grandfather’s brain? We are not going to keep up. It takes a long time to grow more brain.”  It’s IT’s job to keep up with technology, but deliver it in a way that makes users feel more productive and smarter.  

And if “making employees feel smart” isn’t on your goal list for 2010; consider this: McManus says, “if you increase usability, you will increase customer satisfaction 40 percent — and that affects your bottom line.”  Who’s dumb enough to argue with that?

Many of the organizations I talk to tell me that implementing ITIL® service lifecycle processes for the first time or expanding current processes can be an overwhelming undertaking – either way. It’s even harder when you factor in the complexities of a down economy. Customers have told me that they have chosen ITIL as a best practice framework because it helps them with improving efficiency, cutting costs and standardizing processes across the business. So, how do you get started or make your next ITIL project a reality? How can you get this done in a way that fits your business priorities and your budget today? Can you really do it now?

There are steps you can take to make implementing ITIL easier and faster than you think. View our latest on demand webinar where Gary Case, Principal Consultant, Pink Elephant and Don Cholish, Product Manager, Numara Software show you what you can do to make implementing ITIL easier and how to use your IT Service Management solution to move forward. (Insert link)

Curious about how implementing ITIL will help you stretch your IT budget even further? Read our latest white paper, “How Life in the ITIL Fast Lane Can Deliver Success”. Co-authored by Pink Elephant and Numara Software, this paper examines the critical role effective processes play in driving down service costs and demonstrating value to the business. Cutting to the chase, the paper removes ITIL confusion and outlines the priorities you should address to make ITIL work. Real-world success stories are included as well.

The stacks of catalogs shoved in my mailbox each day are a sign the holidays are fast approaching.  There’s something refreshingly simple about catalog shopping: it’s easy to see all of the options, family and friends can turn down the pages with the items they want, and you can quickly add up the total cost to see if it fits your holiday budget. 

In the office, a centralized  IT service catalog can bring the same simplicity and clarity for the business.  It gives the IT organization an opportunity to present users with a list of available services and options they can select from. This “friendly face of IT” helps to streamline the communication between users and IT and gives users the ability to select what they want while browsing through the catalog and submit requests.  IT can then seek required approvals/authorizations and the business unit can clearly compare the costs of their total IT requests with their actual budget. 

Think about a service catalog as a one stop-shop for all of the services you offer. The Amazon.com of IT, if you will.  Behind the scenes, the catalog links to the required approvals and work steps for each type of service. So as soon as a service is selected, all of the steps necessary to get it approved, purchased and completed automatically kick off through the integrated IT service management system.  And because it’s all captured in the system, activities and trends can be tracked to help you to further streamline workflow in the future.

A central service catalog can reduce a lot of frustration for customers and IT team members by letting them just open up a web page, see what services are offered, and click to “buy.”  Plus the automated workflow means IT’s response time will be faster, which will also make them happy “consumers”. Maybe most importantly, the service catalog increases efficiency and the transparency of service costs, helping IT to integrate with Financial Management and clearly demonstrate value back to the business.

So by taking a page out of the catalog, we IT professionals can better demonstrate our value to the business and streamline the service request process for internal and external customers.  Maybe now we’ll get home in time to do some shopping.