Plea for an IT Business Partner or adopting the Startup attitude when facing challenges and problems

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Does the IT function receive all the credit it deserves? Not really!  Surprising, considering IT key role and technologies’ contribution to business success. Maybe business leaders should start adopting the Startup attitude when facing new challenges or consider someone who does as a real Business Partner, like IT Consultants. Here’s why?

I understand that all CFO, CMO and CHRO will tell you that their function is the most valuable within the enterprise but one can’t fail to see that without IT, all these guys would be in trouble, right… or elsewhere!

Nevertheless, even 15 years later, the year-2000 bug still feels like a big knot in the throat for most C-levels, CTOs & CIOs have lost a lot of credibility there. On the other hand, slowly but surely, CTOs & CIOs are slowly gaining higher decision-levels within enterprises.

The CIO & CTO Dilemma regarding its IT Business Partner

Ironically, as an IT Consultant, we live the same situation as CTOs & CIOs, the undervaluation of our contribution to our Clients’ growth which confine us to a role of a simple supplier instead of a real Business Partner. And yet, if one should appreciate the key role and properly evaluate the true contribution of an IT consultant, it would have to be the CTO & CIO, right?

Hence, the need to remind the true nature and the scope of IT Consultants’ contribution to their Clients’ success (CTOs & CIOs) which is a much more difficult and important task; that is, identifying problems and assessing challenges in designing the solutions that will enable and / or contribute to :

  • Increasing growth
  • Reducing production and execution costs
  • Enhancing / Optimizing productivity
  • Reducing security risks

An invaluable contribution without which the company would suffer immediate repercussions and which could turn out to be fatal to its survival in just the same way as a bad finance or marketing decision, no more but no less.

So, dear CTOs & CIOs, why wouldn’t you enhance your supplier selective process, why is your hiring model base solely on hiring resources stationed locally or why do your just trust commercial product vendors when, most of the time, the task of adapting a commercial product to your business reality (process) is way much bigger and as expensive as developing a custom solution from scratch.

Fresh Eyes, like adopting the Startup attitude

Dear CTOs & CIOs, you will have to realize one day that a commercial product vendor will always be biased by its product, no matter what problem or challenge you’re facing, his goal is to mould your challenge or problem into its product. The commercial product vendor does not have and will never have a clear and neutral vision of your challenges and problems, and even less of your business reality, because it is filtered by his product.

The Startup attitude is to look with fresh eyes at challenges and problems, to suggest a creative vision of the situation which, in turn, materializes into an innovative solution to a particular challenge or problem. In this regard, they offer CTOs & CIOs a perfect example of the right attitude to adopt towards the many competitive and technological challenges CTOs & CIOs are regularly confronted with.

Therefore, if you’re looking for a true IT Business Partner, ask yourself : « Does my IT Consultant look at my situation with fresh eyes, does he bring along a creative perspective to my challenge, does he offer a custom innovative solution to my problem? »

Denis Paul & Michel

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