How to Market IT`s Value - Are You Ready?

I’m starting to really get it now—but what about my peers? Are other IT executives embracing marketing?

When we started teaching IT leaders about marketing 20 years ago, fewer than 1 percent understood its value. Looking back 10 years ago, a greater percentage of IT leaders were just starting to engage in marketing, but these activities were mostly tactical. (At the time, average CIO tenure was less than three years—coincidence?)

Today, CIOs understand why marketing is critical to success, but they’re looking for the specific how-to’s. They’re more business savvy than ever and are building a consultative, marketing savvy IT workforce and culture and using marketing to strategically position IT as their company’s competitive IT provider of first choice. As for CIO tenure—according to recent research, it’s up to somewhere in the five-year range.

How do I know we’re ready to market our IT organization?

Most IT organizations aren’t well-positioned for marketing. If your organization operates as a siloed, technology-centric order taker, and you try to market IT as the consultative, client-focused, business partner of choice, there’s going to be an obvious disconnect that will undermine your marketing efforts and further erode the trust and confidence of the business community. If I had a buck for every IT leader that I have convinced to take a step back to instill a consultative mindset and a client-oriented culture before tackling marketing, I could have retired by now (current economy and 401K performance aside). The bottom line is, you have to be ready to deliver on your marketing promise.

What are the benefits of marketing IT?

 The benefits are many. They include:

• Linking IT to the overall strategic initiatives of the company.
• Enhancing IT’s professional image and boosting its credibility as a trusted partner.
• Bridging the gap when IT is remote or not co-located with the business.
• Increasing the awareness of everyone in IT of the full extent of IT’s services and capabilities so that they can  Managing demand and overload, and reducing unwanted, low-value work.
• Providing IT leaders with the competence, confidence, commitment and consistency needed to compete against the plethora of external service providers who are pitching their services and cost-cutting abilities to your corporate executives today.

Although we may not have the image or reputation we would like today, we need to recognize that our IT organization does a tremendous amount of great work. Our IT staffs are some of the most dedicated, hard-working people you’ll find in most organizations. They are “on” 24x7, working nights and weekends to meet deadlines and go-live dates.

Dan Roberts is the president of Ouellette & Associates and co-author of Leading IT Transformation: The Roadmap for Success.