This month, Jeremy Hyman Associates examine the three distinct phases IT teams have gone through over the last decade.

Firms that have IT resources stuck in the wrong era will be stymied in their attempts to make progress. Which description below best matches your team?

Engineer

Wind back ten years and the IT team would mainly have had engineering skills. IT was a highly technical discipline. In the absence of the immense and readily available corpus of information that we now have on the Internet, technicians had to rely on experience, peers or vendors to assist them. IT was something of a dark art, and the head of technology was to be revered as a master practitioner.

If your team are still focussed on the technical aspects of IT, that means that either they or your technology is out-of-date. We are not saying that IT should not have any technical capability; rather if this is their specialism, it isn’t the specialism you need.

Out-of-date people or systems most usually indicates a lack of confidence in changing either or both. Sometimes this constraint is budgetary, but in our experience this is rarely a genuine objection since the benefits that accrue from making progress using the right people and systems outweigh the investment within a short period.

Co-existence

Around about five years ago, the mass-migration to cloud systems was really underway. I’m not going to argue the benefits or otherwise of cloud technology this month, but one of its consequences was that much of the technical knowledge needed previously became redundant. There was no server to configure, no system to maintain. This was replaced by a monthly payment to a service provider.

During this period, the IT department were fully occupied with migrations and integrations, and we describe this time as “co-existence”, because technologists were still focussed on the technical delivery of moving to the cloud.

If this describes your team, then perhaps they are nervous that fully migrating away from historic working practices will expose them to disciplines where they lack confidence; to engage fully with users and the business, and appreciate the pervasive role that IT should have. Quite often this is evidenced by a “head in the sand” attitude, where IT deliver enough service to the firm that no-one will bother them; but they are not contributing to progress.

They can be coached out of this rut, and can be shown their value as part of the wider firm. Everyone, management included, should be encouraged to think of IT as a profit-centre, not a cost.

Leadership

Nowadays, most technical challenges have been solved, if not within your firm, by your peers or vendors themselves. Technology is commoditised. This means that the skills needed from your IT resources are primarily not technical. Instead, they should be concerned with the selection and delivery of projects that are aligned to your commercial goals: revenue, profit, efficiency, risk reduction and similar.

This is where you want your IT team to be. They should mingle freely with service line leaders, be inquisitive – and even expert – about production systems and processes. Their experience in technology will complement other knowledge in the firm, and show how the appropriate application of good IT can ease the flow of work through the firm. Respect and engage your IT leaders as you would any other leaders in the firm, and expect as much from them.

Summary

If either your IT team or the systems that you are relying on are out of step with current thinking, your firm is on the back foot. As good as you may be in delivering your professional services, you are hampering yourself with technology challenges that you need not face, and holding yourself back in an area that is actually quite simple to improve.

A review of teams and technology can paint a path for those that need it, to bring both up to the right level enabling firms to make real progress.

Jeremy Hyman Associates is a leading independent technology advisory practice acting for PrimeGlobal and several member firms. They are pleased to continue offering a one-hour complimentary consultation session with Jeremy to managing partners or IT partners, as a gesture of our ongoing partnership with them.