Whilst Change and Transformation continue to drive business decision-making, ICT (in some cases) is still viewed as a break-fix responsive service whose function is to simply keep the lights on. It is only when things start to go wrong that people sit up and listen. It’s therefore important to be on the front foot and thinking towards the future to stay ahead of the curve and to (’assure’ good governance and viability) within your organisation moving forward.

It is a well-known fact that many organisations still do not engage with ICT in ways that enable them to get the most out of this important service. A lot of people talk about ICT being an enabler for Business Change but in the real world and behind closed doors that is not always the case.

I often speak with Executives who want to make changes but do not know where to start when it comes to the perceived ‘dark art’ of ICT service delivery. This can be through a knowledge gap or that they think things are going well based on what is being told.

So here are a few things to consider when designing your ICT Future Delivery Approach (FDA).

•Problems: Delivery of ICT services is no longer about technology and fixing things. It is about identifying business problems that you need specialist expertise and help to solve. Start with analysing key business issues and work backwards, from the problem through to the required outcomes that you want to achieve. This approach will help identify solutions and benefits and support any business case for your FDA. When designing your approach, it is crucial to understand the day-to-day challenges that ICT can help to address, and this will aid in thinking about available options for your FDA.

• Participate: A fundamental part of any FDA design and its implementation is colleague Consultation and ongoing engagement. Often when designing new ICT models, organisations ‘do to’ colleagues, rather than ‘do with’ them. Collaborating with people impacted by Change enables them to be part of the journey, it is important to talk to people, get their views on what works well, and what could be improved, sharing any ideas that will enhance the ICT experience. This approach builds trust and loyalty, helping to embed new ways of working and ‘gel’ teams together.

• Personalities: We see organisations dive straight into technology to solve issues and then get bogged down with escalating costs, wasted effort, inadequate solutions, and an ICT service that does not or cannot deliver what is needed. People, often get slotted into roles because of their technical ability or previous work experience, rather than their personality, approach, and willingness to learn new things. It is easier to teach the technical side of a job than it is to change attitudes and behaviours. When designing your FDA, play to the strengths of your people, have functions, roles and processes that enable the right people to make a difference, identify shining stars and develop plans that allow them to thrive through collaboration with colleagues across the organisation openly and constructively. Build your approach to enable continuous personal development, and succession planning and remove single points of failure.

• Priorities: Have an ICT strategy and action plan that provides a golden thread back to your organisation’s operational delivery plans, corporate risk strategy and overarching business strategy. Tell people what the organisation’s priorities are, so that there is clarity for everyone. This approach will inform the skills, knowledge and experience needed to align and deliver effective ICT services alongside your business priorities. It will ensure that you can design an approach which will deliver what the business needs rather than have an ICT service that ‘thinks’ it knows what the business needs are.

• Productivity: Have an approach that enables quality to be reviewed, continually. Identify service interdependencies and design processes that follow good practices, which are simple and easy to understand and carry out. Often ICT delivery becomes complex because of unnecessary bureaucracy, preventing the job from getting done and resulting in all-around frustration. Create simple, flexible controls and measures that enable you to know how your ICT service is performing and use that insight to continually refresh your service approach.

• Performance: The role of ICT takes many forms but in simple terms, it is all about the experiences of people who work together to deliver the service and the people who use the service on a day-to-day basis. Happy and motivated people will deliver great outcomes. Customer service should therefore be the focal point for any FDA. Core to this is, maintaining great relationships and building trust. This can be achieved through business partnering, speed of response, setting expectations and keeping people informed. Any FDA design should consider these key components along with the metrics and feedback required to provide a useful insight which can be used to continually refine your service approach.

One Consulting has supported many organisations to review and improve their approaches to ICT Service Delivery.

We understand business challenges and the need to think in different ways to make things simpler, quicker, and easier. If you would like to know more, please do contact us.

Stephen Repton

CEO