IT for Business (IT4B): From Genesis to Revolution, a business and IT approach to digital transformation

CHAPTER ONE: FROM GENESIS TO REVOLUTION

Que sera, sera, what will IT4B…

What is IT4B? It sounds like another acronym designed by IT to fool the business into thinking IT is of vague interest to the business community. Well, this is IT for business, to help the business side of the house determine whether IT is ‘aligned’ or ‘integrated’, and what is missing (and something will always be missing). Of course, when it comes to the digitisation of information services, IT will be in the driver’s seat, meaning IT4B becomes a tool for both parties to determine gaps in requirements, competence, capabilities and even knowledge of the various methods needed to move from business-designed objectives to IT-delivered services.

The primary goal is to assess the readiness of the business and its IT support to achieve business goals. Business goals are supported by business processes; in regulated markets that depend on IT for efficiency, there is not a lot of point in implementing an IT method before identifying what needs to be achieved by the business.

Figure 1.1: The IT4B lens

Figure 1.1 illustrates the subject areas covered by this way of thinking. IT4B is a structured way of thinking, supported by detailed examination of the most common attributes in an enterprise. As described in the introduction, this is the lens, a model through which we examine business and IT readiness. Three linked components – the Benefit Model, the Enterprise Architecture and the Operating Model – are used to focus the issues illustrated around the circumference of the model. In the centre, the icons we use to describe elements that always need attention are shown; these elements will be identified later. For now, this chapter introduces the model and the reason we built it, and outlines what will be discussed later.

Providing the necessary structure to facilitate digital innovation is often a challenge. Based on our more than 20 years of research and experience at the interface of business and IT, an approach emerged that helps translate business goals into digital ‘ambitions’ and a roadmap in a practical (non-technical) manner. Using a set of simple canvasses, you gain insight into the steps you can take to transform your organisation into a digital enterprise.

As we mentioned it is not a ‘new’ IT method; existing good practice methods are referenced, not altered, and we explain how they can work more effectively when used together.

The focus is the realisation of the opportunity that IT presents. If only your IT ‘innovation’ was focused on the future of the business and the business market in which it operates rather than implementing the latest method, software or technology.

More often than not, your IT people expect you to understand their language and claim that it is impossible for the business to articulate what they need or want. Most, if not all, of the IT frameworks and models don’t help with ‘translation’ of business requirements. The result is that a rapid response to a business problem is most often based on finding help in one of the IT best practices familiar to the enterprise.

In these circumstances, IT is a roadblock to innovation. Instead of examining the principles of, say, efficiency and effectiveness in relation to how quickly they can respond to the business when new services are needed or in times of crisis, the default response is to examine their various models of best practices to see where they fit into a process they understand.

The philosophy behind IT4B is that the full potential of digital innovation (Figure 1.2) can only be achieved if it is successfully embedded within a benefit model, an enterprise architecture and your enterprise’s operating model. On the other hand, the true power of digital innovation can only be fully enjoyed if your enterprise has reached a certain level of digital readiness. The foundation of successful digital transformation is constructed when there is equilibrium between digital readiness and digital innovation. The IT4B framework and canvasses enable enterprises to discover the opportunities for digital innovation and create a digital profile of their specific enterprise. The goal is to illustrate how to use the model and the myriad methods that exist in IT to reach the appropriate level of digital readiness.

Figure 1.2: Digital innovation

No one in IT ever tries to do a bad job or provide poor customer service; the issue is that IT professionals are most often directly recruited and are therefore intrinsically IT-centric – they have no experience of the business in which they operate and thus seem distanced from understanding what is going on. Consider again the issue of regulated markets: who would you expect to be the subject-matter expert? It certainly would not be the people running the data centre.

Discovering the missing pieces is often a navel-gazing IT exercise, which arrives at a number of fairly standard responses. We need our IT people to be certified in architecture, or a development method, or a programming method, or a method to manage projects. Often the result requires significant management attention and the entire enterprise is said to be in need of some form of recognised external audit badge, or sometimes more money to buy more ‘tools’.

It is not focused on making sure IT understands business.

Figure 1.3: Using both halves of the brain for business and IT

Just as the focus for healthcare should be the health of the population, the focus of every digital innovation should be ‘business first’.

Business-first approaches require insight into the enterprise and its processes. It can be helpful to take a bimodal approach to the business processes by discerning two distinctive categories: ‘left-brain’ processes (logic, analytic, linear, mathematical, facts) and ‘right-brain’ processes (creative, imagination, holistic, visual, experience). This is shown in Figure 1.3, which illustrates having to keep opposing and often contradictory arguments at the same time in different parts of the