Not only has IT undergone major changes in recent years, but it has not shown any signs of slowing down. Will you take this opportunity by the horns or will you shy away in a corner of doubt and hesitance? Regina Yulo, manager of BrightTALK’s ITSM community asks Andy White, Senior VP of EasyVista, what his thoughts are on what’s next for IT.
Andy is presenting a webinar as part of BrightTALK’s Emerging Trends and Technologies in ITSM summit, live October 7-9.
See the full summit line-up here: https://www.brighttalk.com/r/VhQ
Regina:
Please give us some information on what your webinar will be about and what key takeaways viewers can expect from it:
Andy:
IT is going to radically change. Not necessarily from new technology or point innovations (although of course it might), but how we harness the capabilities we already have and extend these to our customer and critically, our customers-customer. We have already made good progress with services and applications ‘we’, IT have built…. But the next chapter, probably 3-5 years out, is where IT itself becomes an Application for key stakeholder in the organisation to harness. IT cannot do it all anymore. They know what they need. They know their customer and their pain. Removing the bottlenecks yet retaining governance and control is key. IT cannot be the bottleneck, and it’s no longer about pure IT…..this will be just 1% of the challenge. The 99% is looming and heading our way fast.
Regina:
What are the main challenges of a “traditional” service desk? Can this type of service desk survive in 2015 and beyond?
Andy:
Today, the service desk is dealing with customer need ‘A’ – “it’s broken, I need a new widget, or how do I?”….These services will always be require, but they will become more automated, self-serving and they will have to deal with the ever evolving technology adoption curve. So today you may be supporting Exchange configuration issues or BYOD security hurdles, but tomorrow you may be supporting applications that are not even in the workplace today.
Tomorrow, (and the opportunity) the service desk becomes proactive and even consultative. What the service desk knows is of immense value to the business as we attempt to ‘digitize’ the workplace. Everything we know about SLA’s, OLA’s, CAB’s service design and workflow is going to become core to all business functions with a view of improving their world.
Regina:
Which 2014 trends are you in favour of?
Andy:
Nearer term, I am a real advocate of showing and proving the business value of IT. We now have the technologies that allows us to speak C-Level and not IT code. The trend I really like is moving away from ‘How many incidents / problems / Change requests we managed, to how much value we delivered……is $$$$
Regina:
Which trends do you think should get left behind and forgotten?
Andy:
I only have a paragraph ;-)….. but in short, we need to leave the “IT is just a reactive service” in the past….IT is the business.
Regina:
When it comes to change management, what do you think are the important things organizations should consider in 2015?
Andy:
I really think we should change the way we evaluate IT components. We spend too much time looking at the silo capability and not enough time looking at how the technology can be harnessed into the wider picture.
In a more ‘classical definition’ of Change Management, I think we need to radically speed change up and extend this capability to the wider business. How many of us still gain approvals that touch email, post-it note, xls, or some other form of form!….. we have the technology and knowledge to ‘digitize’ and automate many complex processes (that are nothing to do with IT)…
Regina:
What are the top 3 things businesses should do now in order to ensure that they won’t be made extinct in the years to come?
Andy:
1. Understand how the world and its people (or things) will work….. Roughly
2. Connect this to your business. What are the implications. What are the data feeds / leverage…. Think about how you are central to everything…. Because it will be all noughts and ones.
3. Make friends with the head of marketing. He / she is going to become your BFF.
Interested in more? Register for Andy’s webinar “The 8 States of IT: Preparing for the Emerging Trends” here: https://www.brighttalk.com/r/thQ
Photo credit: zsoolt
