Consumerization of IT will drive Enterprise Productivity
CIOs also feel the need to gain new grounds due to the rise of Cloud computing. Cloud computing shifts the burden of managing IT infrastructure and applications from IT to the vendor. Such a tectonic shift is driving Enterprises to reimagine the role of the CIO. The good news is that the CIOs can become the backbone of Enterprise communications through enabling consumer-like experiences to the IT end users and the end customers.
Consumerization of IT
Sangram Aglave, Contributing Editor asked the group for their thoughts on treating the Internal end users of IT systems the same way as they would treat the end customers of the business.
“Providing employees access to work applications like email, leave management, expense management on their own devices and almost always IT teams have to do a little more than they thought to achieve this” said Tarun Kumar, IT Project manager, ST Microelectronics.
In response to the question around shadow IT, Vikas Malhotra, Sr General Manager, Hero MotoCorp said “setting aside an experimentation budget can help in controlling shadow IT. Also having Business partners for capturing the demand from business and communicating the same with IT is essential.”
Shreesh Madhav, VP, Data Center operations, Max Life Insurance emphasized that AI enabled bots have now gone mainstream and more intuitive compared to legacy interfaces. He said “bots can significantly improve cross functional communications and can also deliver key business metrics to the business leaders”
George Fanthome, CIO, Vedanta Oil & Gas and Group IT Head, Vedanta Ltd on the topic of shadow IT “we need to look at the threats and risks but beyond that IT should not come in between what business wants to achieve.” He also mentioned that “giving freedom to young engineers to suggest ideas and mandate to innovate is important”.
On the question of end user perception of IT, Amit Chabbra, SVP, Customer Experience, SBI cards “the worst thing is if end users lose trust in IT and as a result they withdraw themselves which leads to huge productivity loss to the business.” He went further and added “IT people cannot sit in a room and select something that they think is best for the rest.”
Peter Doherty, Principal Solutions Consultant, Servicenow added “Millennials and Generation Z have grown up and raised in the world of consumer internet. They expect completely different things from their workforce. And the best and brightest might leave in search of modern workplaces leading up to a talent crunch.”
In response to a question around how CIOs can gain more ground in the changing realities of the IT office, Peter Doherty, Principal Solutions Consultant, ServiceNow said “IT should look at being the communications backbone of the Enterprise through enabling cross functional workflows. A lot of work needs to be shifted from emails and spreadsheets to a system of engagement with intuitive automated workflows.” Peter added “IT can smoothen employee and process touch points between various stakeholders from different functions through deploying purpose-built workflows.
Businessworld Perspective
CIO’s have a new responsibility for delivering consumer experiences to all stakeholders within an Enterprise i.e. Employees, Customer and vendors. This is one way in which the IT can contribute to retain top customers and top talent while improving the productivity of the organization. CIO and their team have a once in a life time opportunity to change the culture of their organizations through changing the way people work and communicate with each other.
