The traditional IT department as a pure cost center in companies has had its day. Rigid structures and little to no authority for the IT manager within the company usually lead to silo thinking in the traditional IT department. In today's blog post, we shed light on how to break down this silo and digitize and advance it with the help of a modern IT company.
The traditional IT Department
The classic IT department consists of an IT manager and his team. To put it bluntly: hidden away in the basement of the company, the department takes care of maintenance and applications and is usually only contacted when something isn't working. If the department does its job so well that everything works as it should, it is hardly noticed.
Admittedly, this image may be exaggerated and no longer applies to most companies. Nevertheless, many CEOs need to change their mindset when it comes to IT.
The IT manager and his department come from a time when information technology was only a part of business processes. This is no longer conceivable today, especially in tech-savvy industries.
Away from the traditional Head of IT
A traditional IT department consists of two main areas: networks/infrastructure and applications. In addition to supporting daily operational tasks, the strategic orientation of the entire IT landscape has also become critical to the company, for example in terms of competitive disadvantages due to complicated approval processes or an insufficient overview of key company figures. Therefore, a C-level position is now needed to observe overall market developments and corresponding trends and to be able to map and forecast the future of IT.
The IT manager in the traditional sense, i.e., subordinate to production, for example, is no longer needed. This is because purely operational tasks can also be performed by team leaders.
New structures in the modern IT department
Ideally, there is a team leader for each sub-area of IT who is solely responsible for day-to-day operations. These team leaders can operate largely independently of each other in their day-to-day work and coordinate with each other through “short channels of communication.”
In companies with multiple locations, this also has the advantage that the team leaders only need to be familiar with the actual conditions on site, but not with strategic or commercial aspects. These are handled by a CTO, for example.
In the field of information technology, CTO does not refer to a person who is responsible for the strategic evaluation and orientation of the technical product range or who controls the development of the company's own products.
Rather, it is a position that is responsible for the operational management of the company's hardware and software assets to maintain production and communication capabilities both internally and externally. It deals with the strategic orientation of IT and evaluates and implements tools to optimize the company's productivity.
Moving away from pure maintenance
These changes in the organization of the IT department mean that it is no longer solely responsible for maintaining infrastructure and applications, but has become a fundamental component of the company's success.
IT as a driver of innovation rather than a cost center
If the IT department is seen as a fundamental component of the company's success, it can become a driver of innovation. It focuses on business processes and their digitization and optimization, thus ensuring that companies remain competitive. The modern IT department is a kind of service provider for the respective department and acts flexibly, drawing on external resources to implement innovations in a timely manner.
Inclusion of external resources
In this scenario, it makes sense for a modern IT department to bring in external resources. Often, the existing resources are not sufficient for new digitization projects, or the expertise is not deep enough in some specialized areas. In many cases, the existing IT department is so busy with day-to-day tasks that there is simply no capacity left for new developments. The trend is therefore moving away from a rigid department with a fixed staff to a flexible personnel structure that draws on external resources, such as freelancers or nearshoring models, depending on the scope of the project.