I Don't Trust My IT Department
It’s hard. You have a lot at stake. The competition is tough. Your customers have high expectations. You have to rely on your team. When somebody lets you down, you have a long memory. Some times when things go wrong, there has to be blame.
The IT function takes it on the chin often - sometimes rightly so – sometimes not. Staff functions are easily made into scapegoats, but technology and the high expectations that go along with business technology solutions put IT at the center of the cross hairs, very often. Too often the blame is unjust.
On the other hand, I believe my grandmother was often heard saying something like, “if you can’t stand the heat, don’t stand in the kitchen.” If you are going to cook, you have to operate by the fire in the stove. If you are going to preside over technology, you better be prepared to live or die by the technical solutions you provide, and some of them pack some heat.
I have a client right now with a well functioning IT department that has decided on a set of standards for the corporation, which is a good idea generally speaking. Allowing each of the different businesses to do its own thing can be a problem. However, it seems to have gotten into trouble by standardizing on a CRM platform that literally nobody wants. Different groups are slowly committing mutiny, one group at a time, abandoning the standard and adopting their own platform. It is kind of a mess.
How does something like this possibly happen? In my opinion, it is a situation that plain and simply cannot be tolerated. If the IT function adopts a technology that the business rejects, then it is a necessity to find a technology that the business will accept. IT is a support function after all, not a police state. It is there strictly to support the requirements of the business, not dictate how the business will function.
Brother and sister CIO’s I implore you, please don’t declare a software package as a corporate standard until you have done an honest due diligence, and you have the business on board and involved in an educated decision. This is serious stuff, not to be decided based on politics, cronyism or technological purism. Nobody wins unless the technology supports the needs of the business as a first priority.
Selecting software to best fit the needs of the business can be a tricky exercise, especially with all the different options available. Look for an upcoming entry focused specifically on the process of evaluating and selecting CRM software to best satisfy the requirements of the business.