One vision, 360 degrees

Posted: 04/05/2016 - 13:20

Last week I had the great and highly enjoyable privilege of hosting a webinar given by Jeff Seabloom, Alsbridge’s Chief Revenue Officer, entitled ‘A 360-Degree View of IT: Six Key Questions’. The recording of that webinar is now live and can be accessed here, so those of you who missed the event at the time now have the opportunity to benefit from it nevertheless (and can extend that benefit to any of your peers who were also unable to attend).

As Jeff points out at the start of the webinar, “a ‘360 degree’ view of spend across IT, telecom and network, hardware and software assets, transformation and innovation programs and governance is imperative” for any organisation looking to take advantage of the remarkable opportunities which technology can offer, without going bust in the process. With so much of any business now dependent upon (or, at the very least, utilising extremely heavily) IT, an intelligent approach to technology cost management is indispensable – and in order for that approach to assist rather than shackle each function or department (especially bearing in mind how much IT spend is now coming out of those departments directly rather than through the IT department itself) it needs holistically to take into account every area of the business (and their mutual interdependence), and moreover to look outside the business itself at the organisation’s suppliers and third-party relationships.

I won’t steal Jeff’s thunder by revealing here his “Six Key Questions” – they’re waiting for you on the webinar – but it’s fair to say that underpinning them all lies Jeff’s point that “managing these big-cost items really is very strategic; although we talk about commodity items… [even these are] strategic to the business, and sometimes have a disruptive effect on the business, so require an immense amount of business planning and management.” The requirement to approach IT spend strategically is made many times more urgent by the transformative power of the technologies (Jeff highlights cloud in particular as “the biggest kicker for innovation”) now available, not least because organisations need to think not merely about today, but about what each function will require tomorrow (and how that will affect the rest of the business). Only a genuinely strategic, 360-degree view will give the visibility a company needs to be able to steer itself across a tremendously complex landscape into – hopefully! – a rosy future.

One of the many reasons I love my job is that I never stop learning, and this webinar certainly provided me with plenty of opportunities to do just that, making it a very enjoyable one to host (thanks, Jeff!) – and I’m confident many of you out there will derive the same value from it. Again, you can view the webinar here – and you can send your feedback, or any thoughts you may have on the topics covered, to me at jliddell@sig.org (I am of course always keen to hear from potential contributors). Meanwhile, if you’d like to pick this up with Jeff Seabloom directly, he’s available at jeff.seabloom@alsbridge.com and will be delighted to address any questions you might have.

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