Cost-cutting kills client-serving

Dear CEOs, CFOs and CTOs, are you doing this? I have found that business and IT departments were at odds more than once. The reason was that IT was asked to cost-cut services, and the business needed to expand to win more customers and clients.

Is building a contradiction within your organisation working out?

Underinvested IT is usually asked to cut costs. The result is services everyone hates and no one wants to use, resulting in additional adoption costs and cost-cutting targets that cost more than they save. Furthermore, they tend to damage IT’s brand and recognition as an entity that can deliver value and giving your teams bad tools will make your best talent leave.

This is leadership damaging the backbone of their organisation.

In 9 out of 10 projects I have been involved in, i have seen this contradiction and it made different areas in an organisation just work against each other.

On the other hand, businesses are asked to increase sales and expand. They demand customisation and special services from IT because their clients ask for it. It is often a deal-maker to provide tailored service to a client.

IT often says no to any of those services being provided. The business has small teams at best to research clients or customer needs, and because they act in silos, the insights are not shared collaboratively to shape what services need to be created and what targets they need to serve.

Business growth takes a hit because sales or client services can not provide the value they need to deliver.

Essentially, business is asked for growth by providing new and better offers, and IT, on the other side, is told to limit the tools that the business needs to save some money in the short run.

Leadership is creating friction in its organisation.

How do we solve this?

Recognise IT as a supporting revenue creator. If you want to increase value, you will need to invest in the cost of a service. If the service helps you gain more clients and customers, it is damaging to reduce the costs of running it.

This can be as simple as having the right communication apps, collaboration platforms, meeting rooms that don’t glitch when you present or have meetings, and enough data to send big attachments.

Engaging the client and customer is part of the product.

Create a clear value model that connects any IT investment to business outcomes as a supporting entity.

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