Reconsidering the IT Organization in a Post-COVID World

11/25/2020

06: 00 AM

Suketu Gandhi, Partner; Anshuman Jaiswal, Principal; Dominique Harris, Principal; and Hrishikesh Tendulkar, Manager, A.T. Kearney

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Pursuing initiatives throughout organization redesign, functional expense reduction, and process automation is a should to make sure success in the new company paradigm.

Image: RobbinLee – stock.adobe.com

As companies continue to navigate the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have actually seen a variety of market developments and organization adjustments that impact the IT organization’s future.

Already, business across markets are responding via three significant operating model developments:

1. Increasing the digitization of consumer relationships— Altering customer practices and limitations around face-to-face interactions have accelerated the requirement to digitalize customer relationships for B2C and B2B organizations. Audi is leading the way on high-value sellers utilizing VR for a virtual showroom, minimizing both real estate requirements and in person interaction, while Amazon Go is innovating the checkout experience for retail stores.
2. Increasing resiliency in their core organization operations— Companies have acknowledged the need to develop greater resiliency and flexibility in their core operations by making tactical technology investments in essential locations like supply chain and inventory management.
3. Allowing brand-new ways of working— Business have rapidly carried out new practices such as the usage of remote work environments and virtual partnership tools. Lots of business have actually also taken huge steps to dramatically change their instant strategies around remote work– such as Google’s postponement of in-person working requirements until Fall2021

Here are a few techniques to address these advancements and pivot from survival to success, where IT organizations should take immediate, aggressive actions to adjust to the much faster organization and IT environment.We suggest short-term prescriptive actions connected to the IT organization throughout these dimensions:

Company style Baselining current operations can help determine how to redeploy underutilized resources or restructure teams to support stretched locations and recently reprioritized tactical efforts. Leading “orgalytics” (organizational analytics) tools such as OrgVue and Nakisa provide the essential technology and analyses, such as period of control benchmarking and computing grade gaps between workers and their line supervisors.

Cost of IT labor operations.

Internal process change.

Following these short-term steps, management can shift to longer-term planning. As service and society begin to recuperate management ought to consider how to deliver continual value while remaining prepared for disruptions.

Organization design. We recommend redefining the IT company’s focus around ability development, migrating to product-focused and platform-oriented groups, as a preliminary action towards enhancing the organization design for the long term. Developing shared platforms that can be made use of across the business will enhance IT’s speed of shipment and usage of business-centered style. An IT department focused on products and platforms, not technologies, brings an enhanced ability to produce value. Both internal and external skill should be recalibrated, starting with an identification of the skillsets needed to provide services to satisfy developing consumer preferences like a mobile experience (for example, iOS advancement, cloud, and so on), ecosystem of gadgets (for instance, IoT), and customization (for example, AI/ML-delivered analytics). This will assist deliver a seamless client experience and customization across channels.

For external labor, those companies that have not yet done so should move toward an outcome-based relationship (OBR) design with outcome-oriented contracts (instead of traditional fixed-time-and-material offers) to get rid of inflexibility and pass risk-response ownership to IT vendors. We also suggest demand-based contracting practices to develop a contingent portion of the workforce that will assist enhance expense.

When taking a longer-term view of the expense of IT labor operations, it is important to utilize modern methods of operations that make sure quality outcomes in a cost-optimized way through practices like embracing or expanding the cloud infrastructure and collaborating with providers to increase automation in order to enhance labor operations.

Positioning innovation as a strategic financial investment and upgrading interactions and procedures accordingly will assist to move the understanding of IT to that of a tactical partner to business. It is also essential to develop brand-new methods of working to enhance the remote workplace, with regular situation testing of the facilities, to make sure flexibility for operations during interruptions.

Pursuing initiatives throughout organization redesign, operational cost decrease, and process automation is a must to guarantee success in the new business paradigm to come following the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic.

The authors want to thank Telly Davakos, Manager; Orlando Barreiro, Associate; Mauricio Gandara, Associate; and Alan Soltani, Associate, A.T. Kearney, for their important contributions to this short article.

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