Nick Schratz
In the past, IT was not viewed as a revenue making department, but rather a business support system. Something adopted by companies to help their other “profit-making” departments increase their profit margin. Today, IT no longer just helps keep the business running. Instead, IT has helped become a driver of business growth. With more and more of our everyday life becoming dependent on technology, companies have found ways to compile mass loads of data on users that they can leverage to better their business. These can be utilized to create increased production, revenue, and profits among other things. The major issue facing many IT departments is the lack of definitive metrics used to evaluate performance. CTO’s of the past understand how IT can support companies, but without metrics to back up the profit-making ability of IT it is hard to justify such heavy investments into the department. Douglas Hubbard described in his article “Everything is Measurable” how we can derive metrics from the processes involving IT by breaking them down and defining what exactly it is that we are trying to measure.
With the evolution of big data, how do you see IT departments growing as profit-drivers in the coming years?
Do you see the vast majority of companies shifting the roles of their IT departments?
Sources:
https://www.cio.com/article/2438921/everything-is-measurable.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2016/07/26/the-changing-role-of-it-in-the-future-of-business/#57a5c95e525d
Well written, my first blog post was about a very similar concept. IT is no longer a silo-ed off part of a business, it is essentially becoming the entire foundation of how an optimized business can run. There are certainly ways that technological improvements can be measured for their value, it just takes an understanding of how a business process would work with or without the technology. Speaking from a possibly biased IT background, I do believe that IT departments are certainly becoming the profit drivers of the future, as optimization and efficiency can significantly increase revenues, while downtime across an IT department can significantly hurt profits. As every piece of businesses continue to move into the digital world, the role of IT will continue to transform and grow.