The work that’s going on in your IT department is fundamentally shaping the success of your company. It has emerged as one of the most important sectors in today’s economy and you can get ahead of the competition by learning how to connect with your IT department.
Your IT department handles everything from making sure your internal networks stay up and running, ensuring that your websites and applications function smoothly. This has them working deep within your company’s back-end operations as well as in customer-facing positions. Your IT department is building a unique insight into your business that you can leverage.
Here’s how you can realize the potential in your IT department.
The Truth Behind Your IT Department
The IT department is no longer just another department seen as the cost of doing business expense. Your IT department has actually become one of the most important profit drivers for your business.
IT departments have gone from fixing printers and tinkering with internal phone lines to making sure your customers and clients have the exact experience they’re looking for. IT has move from the sidelines to front and center when it comes to operations, efficiency, and profit.
Gone are the days when it took a room full of book keepers transcribing every transaction into a ledger and then manually calculating the company accounts; or having to attract customers be personal contact or placing your product in a store.
Computerization has fundamentally changed how companies not only manage the company but also how they access customers.
Where IT Sits in Today’s Business World
Do you know that your IT department has the biggest impact on how customers perceive your company? When your customers first check out your business, they’re getting their first impression from your websites, your apps, and other digital technologies that your IT department is responsible for cultivating. Some may argue that the marketing department is responsible for these digital technologies, but it is the IT department that translates the marketing departments specification and brings those website and apps into existence.
As key aspects of our Industries have moved into the digital realm, IT departments have likewise seen their responsibilities and their importance shift. Being able to connect with your IT department is an absolute necessity that separates today’s most successful companies from those who feel like they’re stuck in a pre-digital past.
This leaves us with one big question. How do you communicate with your IT department?
How to Communicate with Your IT Department
IT departments have a reputation for being tech “nerds” stuck in their silos, but this perception is actually due to a communications breakdown.
IT is an incredibly specialized field. These software and technology experts need to handle everything from server hardware specs to coding for websites and apps. It’s not that they are naturally isolated, but that their work is difficult to translate back to executive level staff.
Here’s how you can overcome this communication barrier.
Learn the Basics of IT
The best way to connect with your IT department is to learn how to speak “techy.”
Now, you don’t have to learn how to code or start building computers from scratch, but you do need to know the nuts and bolts of this side of your business. Knowing the basics of how websites, apps, and networks operate will give you the linguistic tools you need to communicate with your IT staff.
This opens up new insights into what goes on in those server rooms. You’ll be able to get a better grasp on the work being done by your IT department and better connect that labor with your overall goals and operations.
Hire Someone Who Speaks Tech
Don’t have the time to learn what a SAST Analysis Report is? This is where you can skip the tutorials and hire someone who can speak both tech and business.
There’s plenty of technology experts out there that have shifted their careers away from maintaining networks and coding applications to working in finance, marketing or business adminstration. These experts have vital insight into what’s going on in your IT department as well as the ability to translate these technical topics to the rest of the company.
These employees do a great job of bridging this highly specialized divide.
Leveraging Your IT Department
Now that you’re speaking the same lingo as your IT department, what are you doing to better leverage the work that they’re doing?
If your IT department is just there to change the ink in your printers, then you’re not getting the most out of these technical experts. We’re living in a digital age and this means that we need to take every advantage we can get when it comes to working in cyberspace.
Here are three key areas where your IT department can improve your operations.
Improving Products, Interactions, and Marketing
Your IT department has the finger on the pulse when it comes to what’s going on with your products and services. Not only are they the ones that are physically implementing the strategies developed by your marketing department, but they’re also the people in charge of the technology that handles your sales, bookings, and other interactions with your clients.
This makes your IT department the focal point of your business.
Rather than pushing the IT department further into their silo, you can bring them out and have them play a more central role in these important customer-focused interactions. With so much of today’s business happening online, it is more important than ever that your IT department has a seat at the table when it comes to discussing new strategies for increasing your revenue.
Their insights into your digital presence will prove to be invaluable the next time your company sits down to decide on the next course of action.
Excluding IT from this process is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle knowing you are missing an import piece.
Lowering Risks
The IT staff are now front-line employees when it comes to mitigating the risks that your company faces. Your IT staff are at the front-line battling cyber criminals, protecting your company assets, and keeping your client’s information safe.
It all starts with the fact that so much of our business has shifted into the digital realm. Even if you’re not processing digital sales, you still have internal servers that are housing customer data as well as sensitive financial information. If your business suffers a data breach in this information it’s leaked to the outside world, your company could be facing serious financial problems.
Hacks and data breaches are leading causes for damages to a company’s reputation. They can also be the source of expensive and time consuming lawsuits. Your IT department maintains a core aspect of your company’s overall security.
Controlling Costs
Your IT department also has an important role to play when it comes to controlling your costs. It might not seem like your IT department has a lot of pull when it comes to your overhead, but you’d be surprised how involved the IT departments of businesses across the country are.
Even the most basic IT departments are constantly balancing complicated scheduling processes using resource demanding tasks. The development lifecycle for websites and applications is dynamic and constantly shifting. The scheduling and planning expertise that’s being developed in your IT department is something that the rest of your company can take advantage of when it comes time to control some costs.
Your IT department is also developing unique insights into the overall operations of your company. They have been busy implementing your digital presence, they’ve also been gathering data and observing how their work connects to your company at large. One of the smartest moves to make is to take advantage of all of the R&D potential that is waiting in your IT department
IT is the New Status Quo—Embrace The Potential
If there is one take away for how you can change your relationship to your IT department, it’s that the new status quo of global business is based on this technology. Could you company continue to operate without computers or the Internet?
We’re all online and we’re all looking to do business in the digital world. Your IT department can connect you with exciting and new potential as long as you take the time to learn how to communicate with them.
About the Author
Jay LaBonte is the award-winning author of the bestselling book, Your Guiding Genius: Building A World Class Team. Jay holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Information Systems and is a Certified Employment Law Specialist. With over thirty years experience managing teams of all sizes in various industries, he is no stranger to team leadership and has raised the bar on team building. Mr. LaBonte currently provides IT consulting services through Paradigm Systems, LLC. and is one of the foremost experts on Multivalue database performance tuning and administration. You may contact him by visiting www.paradigm-systems.us.
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