Information technology (IT) departments and operations have changed since their introduction and current business needs require that IT becomes more fluid in its delivery of services and solutions without losing consistency, says IT market research and advisory firm International Data Corporation South Africa IT services research manager Jon Tullett.

IT departments are currently closely aligned with the business and specific business out­comes, while IT operations also tend to be workload or business-unit specific in their support. This, however, leads to inconsistency,  with different departments in organisations having very different experiences.

Most local organisations are experiencing some form of this inconsistent outcome and there is pressure to improve consistency. Tullett says that coordinating and improving the over­all performance of IT operations are leading to the emergence of a new role – that of chief digital officer – in organisations.

“Businesses do not know what they need to focus on next or which part of the business will be able to deliver value more quickly. How­ever, they know that the support they need from IT must be repositioned to allow on-demand delivery.

“Businesses, therefore, need IT to become more agile by using the right technology, skills, and expertise to move quickly to support the business. Taking too long to build out systems will strip them of their competitive advantage.”

Having the right platform approach enables businesses to position their IT departments for future evolu­tion, owing to better man­agement of infra­structure, the type of data that they gather and how they interface with the business, says Tullett.

Meanwhile, a particular challenge for South African organisations is to ensure that they have the right skills. Thus, they require at least a medium-term view of the archi­tectural requirements.

“This is very complicated with cloud and more so with emerging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intel­ligence. You cannot anticipate everything in tech­nology, but, simultaneously, you must ensure that you have the pieces in place to build out, instead of starting from scratch. This requires flexible and adaptable infrastructure,” he says.

Skills retention is a particular challenge in organisations where the primary focus is on cost containment, as such organisations tend to make available the minimum resources they need at any given time, which implies minimum flexibility for the future.

Tullett recommends that organisations avoid point skills, and instead ensure that in-house skills are broad and that IT personnel have col­lec­tive exposure across the business to ensure they understand as much of the business context as possible.

“Where skills are required for specific technologies, use subcontractors or out­sourcers, but ensure that you have the inte­gration, business and management skills in-house to integrate. The goal is to move away from a focus on technical skills to ensuring that the business has the right integration skills in place. This will align IT more closely with the business at a granular level,” he says.

“This requires maintaining contact, ensuring that IT is part of the projects and that boundary functions – such as security – are understood from the outset rather than being focused on later,” advises Tullett.

The external drivers are customer and part­ner expectations and businesses must adjust to meet these expectations in terms of ser­vice deli­very, consistency and the ability to inte­grate systems.