CIOs face difficulty in improving business satisfaction due to several challenges:
- Feedback from business is ad-hoc (e.g. water cooler conversations, firefighting emails) leading to partial information and a reactive improvement process.
- Root causes to be addressed are difficult to unearth and organizational priorities are unclear.
- Remedial actions do not get business support due to lack of trust between IT and business teams.
- Remedial actions are not followed through to benefit realization due to lack of IT accountability.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Business satisfaction in today’s scenario is too important to be managed on an ad hoc basis by IT. A structured approach to first measuring business satisfaction and then converting it to an IT Services Improvement program is needed to elevate IT’s role from an order taker to a trusted business partner.
Impact and Result
By using Info-Tech’s tried and tested Business Vision (BV) Diagnostic and our unique data-driven approach, you can construct an annual IT services improvement program that will:
- Measure business stakeholder satisfaction.
- Highlight the impact of IT constraints on the business.
- Prioritize key issues and create an Improvement Roadmap.
- Build action plans to manage critical stakeholders.
- Help position IT as a trusted business partner rather than as an order taker.
Business Vision Diagnostic – Annual IT Improvement Program
Convert your Business Vision Diagnostic results into a focused IT program to enhance business satisfaction
Introduction: Business Vision Diagnostic
Understand your business stakeholders' satisfaction with IT services
Info-Tech's Business Vision program is a low-effort, high-impact program that will give you detailed report cards on the organization's satisfaction with IT's core services. You can use these insights to understand your key business stakeholders, find out what is important to them, and improve your interactions and related IT services.
Ask the Right Questions
Use Info-Tech's low-effort surveys to get the data you need from stakeholders across the organization.
Use Our Diagnostic Engine
Info-Tech's diagnostic engine does all the heavy lifting and analysis, turning your data into usable information.
Communicate & Take Action
Wow your executives with the incredible insights you've uncovered. Then, get to action to make IT better.
Better Understand Current Performance and Business Needs.
- 28-question satisfaction survey
- Completed by 85,000+ business leaders
- Proven results
For more resources, refer to Info-Tech's Business Vision Diagnostic
Analyst Perspective
Improve business satisfaction with core IT services in an objective, data-driven manner.
CIOs face several challenges in improving business satisfaction and serving their organizational needs. The majority of IT organizations have no formal feedback mechanism, and IT receives feedback from the business in an ad-hoc or reactive manner when there are already fires to be put out. Also, IT is considered an order taker by the business and there is a lack of business-IT alignment toward organizational goals.
Having hard data on business satisfaction and proactively building a data-driven IT services improvement program has proven to be an approach that helps breakdown the silos between business and IT and drives continuous improvements.
The Business Vision Diagnostic, Info-Tech's reference resources, and the steps in this blueprint, will act as an accelerator to your success, ensuring that you focus your energy and resources on topics most relevant to improving business satisfaction. This will also ensure that IT service improvement is not treated as a side-of-the-desk activity and IT team members are clear on their accountability.
Finally, measuring business satisfaction with IT services at least annually to review progress and re-align priorities will ensure ongoing success.
Anubhav Sharma
Research Director, CIO Advisory
Info-Tech Research Group
Executive Summary
Your Challenge | Common Obstacles | Info-Tech's Approach |
CIOs face difficulty in improving business satisfaction due to several challenges:
| Historically, conventional measures to address these challenges have run into certain roadblocks:
| By using Info-Tech's tried and tested Business Vision (BV) Diagnostic and our unique data-driven approach, you can construct an annual IT services program that will:
|
Info-Tech Insight
Business satisfaction in today's scenario is too important to be managed on an ad hoc basis by IT. A structured approach to first measuring business satisfaction and then converting it to an IT services improvement program is needed to elevate IT's role from an order taker to a trusted business partner.
IT's challenge
Business is increasingly looking at IT to be a strategic partner, yet few IT departments have been successful in satisfying their needs.
- Since 2013, the Business Vision Diagnostic tool has been used by over 85,000 business leaders across 1000 organizations.
- Only a quarter of IT departments are scoring above 8/10.
- This suggests that there is a lot of room to improve how IT satisfies the business.
Source: Info-Tech's Business Vision Diagnostic Survey
Common obstacles
IT teams continue to operate in a silo, which limits business understanding and lowers business satisfaction with IT services.
- CIOs have not formalized a business feedback process.
- IT works in reactive or firefighting mode.
- Business satisfaction data is not available to discover and address the core issues with IT services.
- IT does not measure progress made toward initiatives designed to improve business satisfaction.
- IT managers do not feel responsible for business goals, neither have the right incentives been set for them to become so.
- IT employees do not have the skills to communicate effectively with one another and business users.
93% Of CIOs say IT's ability to maximize business value is hindered by challenges such as siloed business and IT teams.
40% Of CIOs say limited collaboration across business and IT teams disrupts IT's ability to respond quickly to sudden changes in business needs.
Source: Dynatrace Global CIO report , 2021
Info-Tech's approach for improving business satisfaction through a structured program
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Insight summary
Have a structured approach to managing business satisfaction
Business satisfaction in today's scenario is too important to be managed on an ad hoc basis by IT. A structured approach to first measuring business satisfaction and then converting it to an IT services improvement program is needed to elevate IT's role from an order taker to a strategic business partner.
Conduct discovery sessions with your business stakeholders
As you analyze your Business Vision Diagnostic results, it is important to connect with your key business stakeholders and/or to perform further diagnostics to deep dive into root causes of lower business satisfaction and ensure that you prioritize solving the biggest pain points for the business.
Accelerate your initiative identification with Info-Tech's reference resources
Identifying initiatives to remedy clearly ascertained root causes and using Info-Tech's resources for reference will give you the best output for minimal time investment.
Communicate progress to your business stakeholders
Stakeholder management is very important as business will expect IT to action their feedback and keep them informed on progress, which is sometimes an ignored exercise, amid day-to-day activities.
Hard data on business satisfaction helps bolster budget requests
The Business Vision Diagnostic provide you with hard data on Business satisfaction with IT Services, which can help bolster your IT budget requests.
Utilize Info-Tech's template to right-size your communications to executives
Our executive communication template helps you talk to senior stakeholders in a clear and concise manner with just the right amount of details.
Blueprint deliverables
Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:
Root Cause & Initiative Identification Template
Identify and document root causes and arrive at improvement initiatives based on Info-Tech's resources.
Roadmap/ Gantt Chart
Develop an initiative roadmap and input initiative level details.
Prioritization Template
Prioritize the IT improvement initiatives.
Stakeholder Communication Plan
Create a detailed plan to manage communications with key stakeholders.
Key deliverable:
Business Vision Executive Communication Template
Summarize your Business Vision Diagnostic results and roadmap arising out of this blueprint for executive consumption