6 Chapter 1 • Managing IT in a Digital World
anywhere. Just like cell phone users expect to be able to
send and receive calls without being “dropped” by the net-
work, computer users expect computers to be up and run-
ning, and networks to be available and fast, so that they can
access software applications and data quickly and easily.
Organizations with high operational dependence on IT sys-
tems are so dependent on IT that if an information system
fails for a minute or more, or online response time exceeds
a few seconds, employees can’t get their work done. When
customer transactions can’t be processed, and suppliers
can’t receive orders for materials, business revenues suffer.
In a widely read but poorly titled article (called “IT
Doesn’t Matter”) published in the Harvard Business
Reviewa few years ago, the author argued that the primary
IT management role today is to manage the costs and vul-
nerabilities of the computing “utility”—the data centers and
networks that provide access to business data and applica-
tions (Carr, 2003). However, while this is a critical IT man-
agement role, sometimes outsourced to IT vendors, it is not
the only one. Managing IT also requires identifying what
new technologies to invest in and how to specifically tailor
these new IT solutions to improve the way a specific com-
pany does business. Effective management of the technolo-
gy asset therefore requires not only skilled IT managers and
IT professionals—the human resources asset—but also
active participation by business managers as captured by
the third IT asset: the business/IT relationship asset.
HUMAN RESOURCES Managing the people resources for
any business function requires attention to recruiting, devel-
oping, and retaining the best talent available. Today there is
a high demand not just for IT personnel with specialized
technology skills but also for personnel who have both tech-
nology skills coupled with business knowledge and interper-
sonal skills. Business analyst and systems analyst roles
require personnel who can understand the IT needs of
workers in marketing, accounting, manufacturing, and other
business functions, as well as knowledge of an industry
(e.g., financial services or healthcare). IT professionals who
have a business education, as well as technical skills, are
therefore especially in demand for these types of roles.
Business-facing positions such as these are also most effec-
tively sourced by internal employees—not by employees of
an outsourcing firm or by temporary external personnel.
In the United States today, there are growing con-
cerns about whether the supply of new college and univer-
sity graduates with IT-related majors will be lower than the
demandfor entry-level, domestic IT workers. Although
companies in developed countries such as the United States
have increasingly been utilizing IT workers in less devel-
oped countries to take advantage of lower labor costs for
software programming tasks in particular, IT professionals
are still critically needed to perform important “in-house”
IT roles. (These will be discussed further in Chapter 13.)BUSINESS/IT RELATIONSHIPS The importance of this
type of IT resource was first brought to light in the mid-
1990s as packaged software systems and the Internet were
catalysts for an increase in new IT investments (Ross et al.,
1996). How well an organization uses joint IT-business
decision making for making investments in a firm’s tech-
nology assets is so critical today that there needs to be a
“blending” or “fusion” of IT and the business (see the box
“Fusing IT and the Business”). Achieving business value
from IT investments requires aligned goals for strong
working partnerships between business managers and IT
managers (Brown, 2004) to develop the business case for
investing in new IT solutions and skill sets, for specifying
the business requirements that will be used to design new
IT applications, and for effectively implementing these
new IT solutions so that the potential benefits become
realized benefits.Fusing IT and the Business
When Terry Pearce was an IT manager at a large financial services company several decades ago, he
found that the business managers who refused to help the IT managers understand what new informa-
tion systems they actually needed were the managers who ended up with the least successful IT projects.
Their projects were delayed and more expensive than planned. He concluded that it wasn’t intentional.
Rather, the business managers just couldn’t appreciate why their involvement was important; they saw IT
as merely a tool—not as integral to their business. But to succeed in today’s digital economy, senior busi-
ness managers in companies dependent on information need to be “IT-savvy.” When IT is the basis for a
company’s competitive capabilities, business managers need to be confident in their abilities to build their
company’s IT capabilities into a strategic asset.
[Based on Pottruck and Pearce, 2000; Weill and Ross, 2009]