Take a moment and in your mind, go around the table of your last company leadership meeting. You see all of the people who run your company with you and contribute to the bottom line:
Your CFO.
The head of Operations.
Human Resources.
Anybody Missing?
Is your IT leader (whether you call them a manager, director or CIO) at that table, too?
If so, congratulations.
If not, let’s get real. As we’ve said in other posts in this space, your IT strategy needs to be integral with your business strategy and the consequences if they aren’t connected.
Just How Important are Your Computing Resources?
You get where I’m going with this. You’re missing out if all of the elements of your leadership team, and, ultimately, the elements of your company, aren’t all in alignment.
Let’s remind ourselves of the impact IT has on your company:
- A computer sits on each employee’s desk, thereby impacting daily productivity.
- Your sales people are probably equipped with a connected laptop, tablet or phone with either off-the-shelf or customized software. This impacts your sales.
- Shipping and receiving are connected internally to manufacturing to take good to deliver outbound to your customers.
- Your customer service team (yeah, those people talking with customers who have purchased something) using either off-the-shelf or customized software to record information from and share information with customers.
- If you have an e-commerce component to your company, how is that managed?
Top Line or Bottom Line?
You get the idea: computers are integral to your operation. The secret to making this kind of strategy work, however, is to quantify the impact of each of these areas to the bottom (or top) lone of the company ledger.
Extend An Invitation
So, when does that invitation to the next management meeting go out to your IT person? And if you don’t have an internal IT person, what about your IT consultant? Partners can have a seat at the table, too.
If you are looking to hear more about this approach, give us a call or drop us a line.
TTT
*photos courtesy of Upsplash photographers rawpixel and Samuel Zeller