Is Technology Your Power Core?

With a strong technology power core, you could be far along on the continuum of collecting and using customer data and feedback.

Strong IT departments push very hard for business leaders to provide clear requirements for the application of resources. That means people must justify what they’re doing to get funding.

The great vulnerability is in the decision-making process to determine a priority. Most processes for getting IT funding aren’t comprehensive to the point of seeing how the pieces connect to form the business.  There is no glue bringing the silos together to connect the operations. Each creates its own annual plan, technical requirements and budget. The results can be exasperating for customers as they are automated within databases.

• How many different ways for sorting customers exist in your company?
• How many individual databases do you think have sprouted up to run the engines for each individual department?

Each one of them was argued for in a specific and intelligent way. The risk here is that now you’re not only delivering a disjointed experience to customers, you’ve automated it. I call it “automating mediocrity.”

A Kickstart for Integrating the Customer into the IT Power Core

1. Make information technology a partner in the customer mission.

2. Identify the customer priorities.

3. Create an oversight process for aligning IT resources with customer priorities.

4. Recast IT priorities = customer priorities.

5. Engage IT in the guerilla metrics.

Read More | Watch: Deliver a Reliable Experience, Not an Organization Chart