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Whether IT teams should be comfortable in being a support function or should it help businesses drive bottom line or top line growth in 2014 is a question that’s revolving in the minds of IT fraternity.
There have been mixed opinions among the IT Managers but the majority feels the changing times is a testament to the fact IT Managers need to think about the business growth and align their strategies with the business strategies of an organisation.
Devendra Vengurlekar, Head of IT Infrastructure says, “Let IT team focus on day-to-day business operation up-time and align their goals with business goals, improve IT services and optimize assets and resources including IT staff time. Motivated IT team multiples the business value a hundred fold.”
As IT attrition rates in India increases, businesses may move towards SOA instead of maintaining huge internal IT departments, the CIO may play a pivotal role of an advisor who would leverage best technology to be at parity with competitors or achieve an edge over competition and that will directly help increase the sales / business.
Sandeep Gupta, Management Consultant at A.T. Kearney says, “It definitely has to be both. Gone are the days when IT was looked upon just as an enabler to business functions. Today, it has to contribute to top line by helping business find innovative technology driven solutions. At the same time, it has to also contribute to bottom line by having a constant endeavour to reduce current IT costs through adoption of latest more efficient technology/hardware or renegotiating current contracts/introducing new vendor.”
Vengurlekar adds, “Once IT spending will be cautiously looked at, the companies will see the results and outcome of both bottom line and top line growth will be taken care of.”
Yogeeta Deshmukh, GM - IT at Shalina Laboratories thinks it would largely depend on the existing IT penetration and maturity in the organization. From the Indian perspective, especially in the manufacturing SME sector, IT still needs to drive the bottom line.
She says, “In larger organizations, the focus has shifted not only to IT, enabling growth in the top line by contributing to innovative technological solutions but also on strong governance. Ideally, the IT Managers should be having focused approach to both the Organization’s bottom line as well as top line growth. This calls for a strong penetration of IT though leadership Organizations, which still has a long way to go.”
The main point here is that IT is no longer a cost center and being look up as a contributor to the bottom or top line. IT as an internal function is a very direct contributor to drive the Bottom line growth and a lot of recent developments and advancements around consolidation and virtualization lead to this. On the other hand, IT can act as an enabler for direct business functions and bring in possibilities around mobility and easily available service. This enables people on the field like Sales, services etc to perform better thus contributing to the top line.
Tilak Raj Kapoor, Additional Secretary at MP Water Resources Department says, “It’s important to analyze where we stand. Given a new organisation with zero ICT (I purposely use ICT because communication is key) first importance shall be to strengthen communication across organisation, then comes some quick wins converting traditional hard copy based submissions to online submissions. Thereafter, we can think of gradually structuring information system based on core data and make it online.”
Amandeep Singh Hunjan, Manager IT Services at Orange Business Services says, “IT today is not a support function but a driver for business and hence there are possibilities of contributing to both the Top line and the Bottom line, it all will have to depend on the business strategy and vision of the Organization what benefit to derive from IT.”
Subhakar Rudra, Manager (Corporate IT), Usha Martin shares the viewpoint as he says that IT team is no more a mere support department and it’s the responsibility towards enabling & contributing in achieving the organization’s business goal has increased many fold.
The major objectives of most of the business organizations are either increasing production or expanding product portfolio or market footprints on wide range of geographical locations etc.
Rudra says, “IT team is expected to and should function as service enabler and driver towards meeting the stated business objectives by reorganizing the existing business processes, if required or/and devising and implementing cost-effective yet quality, scalable technology projects which are relevant & in line with the organizational business objective and would provide sustainable tangible and non-tangible benefits to the organization minimum for a period of next 5 years. Yes, the time has come when the IT team should help business functions in driving bottom line or top line growth.”
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