Optimising your IT Operating Model

The evolution of the traditional IT Operating Model
CIO’s have continuously struggled to keep up with external/internal demand for IT resources while balancing the pressure to deliver innovation, reduce costs, and improve the customer experience. The limitations of a static IT Operating Model, stagnant infrastructure, and long procurement cycles makes it almost impossible to keep up with disruptive new technologies. The emergence of cloud, big data, Internet of things (IOT) and blockchain has boosted customer expectations of reliability, low costs, ease of use, and speed.
The world has become digitised and an exponentially increasing amount of consumer transactions are now completed via smartphone. Business customers and partners are demanding a higher level of technological integration, automation, and real time analytics to improve the value of services.
To compete in the digital era, companies are leveraging Cloud Services Providers (AWS, GCP, Azure) and Agile methodologies to increase organisational agility, optimise spend, rapidly deploy innovative solutions, and quickly scale IT resources to meet demand. In addition to these new capabilities, organisations are adopting new frameworks (IT Financial Management, FinOps) and related systems (ClearCost) to help drive digital transformation and optimise resources.
As a result, the following aspects of the IT Operating Model have been continuously reengineered to keep up with the fast pace of change:
Organisation
Traditional Approach
The organisation treats the IT Department as a separate, back-office function and is the sole problem of the CTO/CIO. The success of the IT Department is measured by SLAs for each tower and is not aligned with end-to-end business outcomes.
Digital Approach
The organisation understands how IT impacts all aspects of the business and its ability to deliver products and services to external/internal customers that meet or exceed expectations. Leadership actively invests in technologies that drive integration, enhance data analytics, and the digitisation of business processes. All leaders across the business are committed to digital transformation initiatives.
Processes
Traditional Approach
The IT organisation employs agile and lean methodologies to enable continuous delivery and process improvement. Leaders invest in automation technologies (IPA/RPA) to digitise processes and allow employees to focus on driving innovation.
Digital Approach
Companies focused on digital transformation have employed a multi-vendor strategy to receive the right level of service at the best price. Organisations have partnered with Vendors to integrate them within their IT ecosystem, and shift to a pay-as-you-go model to optimise spend and maintain flexibility.
Technology
Traditional Approach
Organisations using traditional IT Operating Models have historically been mired with lengthy procurement cycles, capacity issues, and costly overhead to maintain on-premises IT infrastructure. IT departments have struggled to keep up with demand for resources while maintaining a technological edge. Investments in costly ERP and legacy systems that support siloed functions have created roadblocks to integration and automation.
Digital Approach
Today’s leading companies capitalise on new technologies to streamline their IT processes, scale resources to meet demand, improve agility and optimise spend. Cloud first strategies have allowed companies to quickly deploy new services and shift capacity by leveraging Cloud Service Providers. Artificial Intelligence and automation enable these organisations to focus more on creating value for customers while reducing risks related to human error. SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS solutions have replaced legacy infrastructure, improved integration, and allow companies to focus on enhancing their core competencies.
Data
Traditional Approach
IT organisations were accustomed to spending large sums of money to build massive ERP systems that stockpile data in isolated environments. These systems housed disparate data sets in silos with no integration or correlation between them.
Digital Approach
Investments in IT architecture in conjunction with big data, machine learning and predictive analytics has enabled companies to mesh disparate data repositories together to create actionable insights. The increased adoption of SaaS solutions and API functionally has drastically improved systems integration. ClearCost takes it a step further by aligning this disparate data with the IT Financial Management framework to help create cost transparency, align IT infrastructure with services and capabilities, and clearly understand how resources are being consumed by the business.
Partners/Vendors
Traditional Approach
In the traditional model, Vendor Management was confined to lengthy vendor deals with a limited scope and arguing extensively over price. Not only does this impede collaboration with Third Party Suppliers, but it also constricts organisational flexibility in an ever-changing business landscape and can negatively impact service quality.
Digital Approach
Companies focused on digital transformation have employed a multi-vendor strategy to receive the right level of service at the best price. Organisations have partnered with Vendors to integrate them within their IT ecosystem, and shift to a pay-as-you-go model to optimise spend and maintain flexibility.
Leveraging ClearCost for the Digital IT Operating Model
ClearCost was designed from a CIO mindset and has the functionality to help tackle the challenges that plague IT in the current digital landscape. Whether it’s optimising spend, managing vendors, or aligning your project portfolio with your Digital Transformation initiatives, we have architected our platform to help streamline your transition to a Digital IT Operating Model.
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