Great Expectations: Ready to Move the Dial in the New IT Landscape? – Angela Yochem, IT Executive, Dell
Session abstract: As you know, businesses are evolving rapidly in response to changing market conditions. As a result, the expectations placed on IT have never been higher. In this session, Angela Yochem will discuss emerging competencies that are required to support business transformation and how we can move the dial in the new IT landscape.
Angela is going to talk about the changes and forces that are causing the business transformations, which in turn are driving IT evolution. Angela is an IT Executive spearheading Dell’s Services Technology portfolio.
What is happening in IT? Some IT shops are shrinking. In fact, many are shrinking. As IT professionals we should view this as a good thing, because it means we are being successful. It doesn’t mean less jobs, it means different jobs.
Another move, the shift from centralized global IT to federated, distributed IT. Enterprise architects typically fear this, because tendency to optimize for the good of the segment instead of the enterprise. However, that’s not what Angela sees. With a strong enterprise architecture backbone, can be successful in federated model.
Another trend, IT shops wanting to run like a product group. Thinking in terms of delivering capabilities, rather than applications.
All of these will change how IT operates.
Why these changes? Because business is changing. Consumer expectations and appetites are evolving. Mom and pop shops need to deliver same level of customer experience as large organizations. Customers are price sensitive, however it’s not the only factor. Other factors, environmental and local concerns.
Not just the consumer. Corporate customers have shifted focus to best overall value. They want what is optimal for them. No longer price and quality. Translate to IT, need to deliver best value solution.
Other change forces, economic volatility, political unrest and natural disasters.
Businesses are undergoing ambitious transformations to win in this new environment. Angela queried audience: how many going through business transformation (about half), how many in room were involved from the onset (only a small percentage). Angela finds that problematic.
Creative bundling and/or packaging of solutions for best value offerings to customers. Angela challenges EAs to put on business hats, think about how they could repackage or bundle current offerings to meet changing business demands.
New offerings, new pricing, new channels. How can you make your enterprise architecture adaptable?
Challenges group: On April 1 pull your top EA minds into a room, give them a (grand) challenge problem. If you are a bank, what would happen if you purchased an airline. If you are a law firm, how would you sell accounting software? Make the request outrageous, yet seemingly possible.
This isn’t M&A, optimizing for closing the books. This is about understanding capabilities. [I would say, business capabilities, organizational capabilities and business-technology capabilities].
Exercise your EA minds. Another challenge, could your organization start renting products or services? How would that change your operational models?
We must be able to shift with changing/emerging business models. [Why I'm focused on change-friendly.]
What if you aren’t able to support business transformation? You need to revisit, rework, revitalize your business-technology portfolio.
Not just the architecture and technology constraints. EA also needs to consider the cultural shifts to be an agile (responsive) organization. We need to break the reliance on F2F interactions. We can’t optimize enterprise architecture on face-to-face interactions.
Invest in business accelerating capabilities: business architecture, acceleration teams, strong toolsets. On strong toolsets, “knowledge is power”.
Actively manage your own capabilities and career as you do your IT shop. As in on the plane, “help yourself before helping others”. The opportunities that will come are significant. There will be great management opportunities. Thought leadership opportunities. All coming for you!
