IT has undergone a shift. Some of this shift has been talked about previously. But right now, I’m talking bedrock principles. Basics, building blocks, foundations, DNA…you get the point.
There’s a little transitive property thing going on. For those like me who are not always strong on basic algebra knowledge:
The transitive property states that if A=B=C then A=C. Follow me as I make a few leaps with this:
1. Search Engine Optimization is the effective and efficient design of an organization’s website in order to garner attention and traffic.
2. A website is an organization’s statement of its central vision and mission (i.e. strategy).
3. A strategy is an organization’s top-down plan for future success.
Put it all together and what do you get? Any effort for search engine optimization should and must be in line with the vision and strategy of the organization as a whole. If executive management says they want to increase their customer base by X number of customers in Y months/years through internet channels, whoever is developing the optimization plan needs to A. stop panicking and B. have passable (or better) knowledge of how SEO can achieve those goals.
So what should this person do? Here’s a short, non-inclusive list:
1. Talk to an organization’s business process owners to understand the existing environment.
2. Talk to executive management to gain historical perspective on where the organization has been, where it is now, and where management envisions it to be in 5 years.
3. Look at the competitive environment. What is the organization’s competition doing? What do they do better/worse? An extension of this is a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).
The great thing about this is that although you may move from one organization to another, you take the knowledge about a given product, market, or industry with you. You become a valuable resource that can provide informal benchmarks and deep-seeded expertise. The benefits go both ways.
When you think about it, IT (emphasis on information) has something that most organizations already own, pay outsiders to sell them, and everyone wants - detailed information about the habits of its customers, trends in the industry, and profitable or unprofitable products.
The process for using this information will be different for an organization like Amazon.com, web-only business, constantly customer facing, versus a company that uses its website for informational purposes rather than commerce.
But you don’t have to be a retailer to use the information a website stores to gain valuable insights into your potential or realized customer base.
This podcast from Gartner talks about the importance of leveraging a web presence to gain those insights.
Its pretty hard for a CFO to say no to an IT leader that presents coveted marketing data on a silver platter, for little or no additional cost over the initial investment.
The dog days of 2001-2004 are finally behind us and IT spending is approaching post-Net Bubble, pre-9/11 levels (i.e. the sweet spot). However, the way money’s spent and approval of that spending has changed drastically. Free-wheeling CIOs are practically non-existent.
This slideshow from CIO Insight calls attention to a number of facts facing IT management in today’s business environment. Increasingly, CIOs (or more often, Directors of Information Technology) report not to the chief executive, but to the chief financial officer. The slideshow spells out one obvious aspect of this; the CIO, and by extension the IT organization are not privy to the formation of a company’s longterm vision.
A second, less obvious, but equally important aspect of this change in reporting hierarchy is this: Who’s writing the checks? By making the IT leader a direct report of the CFO, the company is sending a clear message to IT - “What have you done for me lately?” Whether its a request for a new server, the latest Windows OS, or hiring an additional developer, the IT leader must justify the expenditure and prove Return on Investment.
ROI is nothing new in the business world, but in my own personal experience at clients in multiple industries, it IS new for IT. Obviously, ROI for an enterprise resource planning application, a mainframe upgrade or replacement, or developing a new application is complex, with numerous factors to consider. But there’s a couple key points that can be boiled up into this:
1. IT leaders need to play the hand they’re given.
2. IT leaders need to clean up their house in order to prove to the rest of the organization that they’re as vital to the company’s success as the manufacturing, accounting, or service departments.
3. IT needs to prove ROI by leveraging what they have in their possession, which is arguably one of the company’s most important assets. Something so obvious, that its in IT’s very name and yet is often overlooked…
INFORMATION