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Why You Should Be Aligned with End CustomersExcerpt from Complete Blueprint: Align IT with the Real End Customer

http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/align-it-with-the-real-end-customer


This Research is Designed For: This Research Will Help You:

This Research Will Assist: This Research Will Help You:

This Research Is Designed For: This Research Will Help You:

This Research Will Also Assist: This Research Will Help Them:

Our Understanding of the Problem

The CIO who has accountability for ensuring that IT is behaving in a way that is complementary to the needs of the customer.

The business partner/stakeholder who is interested in ways to work with IT to improve upon existing processes relating to IT and the customer.

Develop an IT department that understands the needs of the organization’s customer.

Assess what processes IT staff are currently using in relation to customer-related tasks. Evaluate process modifications to close gaps.

Motivate new behaviors in IT staff by developing customer-centric metrics to track performance.

Create a communication plan and conduct experiential training programs.

The IT analysts and designers who are responsible for creating customer-facing solutions.

Incorporate customer feedback faster and more accurately into their solutions.

Create solutions that provide a more positive customer experience.


The idea of walking in the footsteps of the customer is not new, but it is rarely done by IT departments

• Today’s customers have new expectations of the organizations they choose to do business with. They expect greater personalization, constant contact, and quick responses.

• The Customer that this research is referencing is the organization’s customer, NOT the business.

• Much has been written on how IT can better serve the business. This blueprint aims to add value by going one step further to speak about how IT can better serve the organization’s customer.

Before We Move Ahead…

Customers are Demanding More

Organizations Aim to Respond but Face Cooperation Challenges

CIOs Want to Help, but Need to Shift their Focus

• Many organizations aim to differentiate themselves on customer experience, but lack of cooperation across organizations is a major inhibitor.

• Issues often arise at the “edges” of organizations, where hand-offs take place. These can include places where a process crosses different functions, business units, etc.

• An IBM report released in March 2014, cites that top CIOs are moving from a focus on back-office to the front-lines as customer engagement and customer experience become key to winning business strategies.

• Meanwhile, many CIOs continue to focus on internal areas – those that are much different from what business leaders are concerned with. CIOs tend to measure IT based on their ability to provide the most effective and efficient service to internal customers while other C-level executives favor external and transformative metrics.


As IT departments grow increasingly world class, becoming customer-focused is a natural next step

Experience Customer Needs

Design Solutions that Meet Customer Needs

Deliver Innovative Customer Solutions

Confirm Internal Business Requirements

Design Solutions that Meet Business Requirements

Note: This research focusses on moving from Business Centric to Customer Centric.

Stage 1: IT CentricDeliver Basic Services

Stage 2: Business CentricDeliver Reliable Internal

Solutions

Stage 3: Customer CentricDeliver Customer Value

Info-Tech Insight

Do not proceed if your IT department is still operating in “Stage 1: IT Centric.” Before IT can be aligned with the customer, they must earn the trust of the business. To be successful, this project requires a positive relationship between IT and the business units.


Even when IT is operating as business-centric, its interests are misaligned

Until IT is able to align its success with the success of the business units, it will continue to be seen as an inhibitor to business success.

The business views my IT department as a

roadblock because they don’t believe that we understand the end

customer or that we are working towards the same

goal of improving customer experience.

The business feels that IT’s intervention will

compromise performance – by either curtailing risk-taking or delaying actions. This contributes to Shadow

IT.

My IT staff doesn’t know what actions

they should be taking to ensure their systems are designed with the customer in mind.

My IT analysts typically struggle with

user experience design, but often do

not seek external help when they should because there is no incentive to do so.

My IT staff often doesn’t understand WHY they are working on certain

tasks over others. There is a lack of awareness,

transparency, and consistency between what the business requests and what actually gets done in

IT.

Traditionally systems get developed to serve the internal

organization and then get translated to work in the external world.


IT and the business must collaborate to focus on the customer

• The traditional business model where IT serves internal business customers, who in turn serve the organization’s external customers, does not meet current realities.

• When customer feedback is passed through the organization, there is often a “telephone game” effect. The message is altered slightly by each stakeholder, either deliberately or accidentally. The result is an distorted customer message arriving in IT and ultimately a negative customer experience.

• To improve the accuracy of the message, IT needs to get to the Direct Voice of the customer instead of the Indirect Voice.

• This is not suggesting IT should talk to the customer before the business or without the business. Nor is it suggesting IT should know the customer better than the business or go over the business’s head. Instead, it’s about IT talking to customer with this business.

ITBusinessCustomer

Business & IT

Customer

Moving from this…

…to this.


IT metrics continue to be predominantly transaction focused instead of business-impact focused

• IT metrics in many IT departments are predominantly transaction focused. They measure the efficiency of transactions rather than IT’s contribution to business outcomes and IT’s ability to respond to market changes.

• Using mainly transaction-focused metrics does little to show the business value of IT.

• In most cases, IT staff’s performance metrics are not tied to external clients. This means IT staff are not incented to create a positive customer experience.

• Additionally, IT staff are not sure how they should come forth with new ideas that could be beneficial to the end customer, meaning many of IT’s good ideas around improving customer experience go unnoticed.

IT is focused on these metrics:

IT should be focused on these metrics:

Help Desk Tickets: Time to Resolve and Time to Answer

Network/Server Availability

Problems Resolved within the Timeframe

Appropriate Prioritization of Tickets

Service Availability


If IT isn’t aligned with the customer, it shows

• The IT department at a home-improvement distributor and retailer designed a solution for sales representatives to use when a customer is making a purchase.

• Sales representatives and customers alike found the solution to be frustrating and difficult to use. If a customer changed their mind about a small detail (i.e. whether or not the product required delivery), the entire data entry process needed to be repeated from the beginning.

• The customer had to repeat information they had already provided, the sales representative had to re-enter it, and both parties had to wait longer for the process to be complete.

• Customers are now unhappy, as they feel their time has been wasted. Customers may tell others about their negative experience with the retailer, harming the name and brand image.

• Sales representatives are also frustrated as they have to handle an annoyed customer. The sales process also takes a long time which subtracts from time they could be spending making other sales.

Case Study

Result

Complication

Situation


Making IT more customer-centric is a huge opportunity for both IT and for the organization

• Aligning IT with the end customer is not just about relieving pains. There is also an opportunity for IT to add significant business value.

• IT has been slowly moving from the back office to the front office as many consumer-based technology trends have taken a hold of the business units including mobility, Internet of Things, social, big data, and online retailing.

• IT is uniquely positioned, with a view across the entire organization, to support the customer experience from end to end. Despite this, IT is generally removed from decisions regarding the end customer. IT staff are unsure how to come forth with ideas that could benefit the end customer so many good ideas go unnoticed.

• As IT becomes increasingly “front-office” focused, they have the opportunity to add a lot of value by understanding, anticipating, and delivering what individual customers desire. However, for this opportunity to be successful, IT staff must have a method to come forth with and to solicit feedback on their ideas.

• By bringing IT staff into contact with the customer, IT will have the opportunity to pose their ideas to the target group to gauge interest and refine details.


Having customers participate in the design process early vastly improves the likelihood of success

• An important part of aligning IT with the customer is involving the customer early on. By doing so, the following benefits will be achieved:

o Improved customer experience arising from more accurate user requirements.

o Avoiding large sunk costs in a solution that the user does not want or cannot use.

o Increased likelihood to deliver on deadlines as surprises and scope creep are mitigated.

o Greater use of the solution.

o More effective use of the system due to improved understanding.

• Without effective involvement early on, the organization is simply storing up problems for the future.

o When problems emerge post-implementation, they are likely to be serious and more problematic because changing the solution becomes more expensive.

• In Step 2.2, we will discuss methods to ensure the customer is involved early.


Aligning IT with the customer can foster a new sense of motivation among IT staff

• It is not new knowledge that motivates employees perform better. However, CIOs often struggle to motivate their IT staff beyond building a system that works to one that is truly ground-breaking.

• Aligning IT with the end customer creates an opportunity to improve IT staff’s sense of motivation and to get them excited about building innovative solutions.

• Getting IT staff in contact with the customer will:

o Help staff to better understand how their work influences the success of the organization.

o Provide them with the chance to bring new insights to the table.

o Create a professional development opportunity.

“Most people in IT don’t really understand what the company does. If you could help IT staff

understand the product and how they influence the organization’s

success, it would have huge benefits for motivation and for

the organization’s success.”

– Senior Developer, Professional Services Firm

Documents

Info-Tech Research Group1 1 Info-Tech Research Group, Inc. Is a global leader in providing IT research and advice. Info-Tech’s products and services combine