"Ensumer" sets the Agenda for IT
Thursday, December 12, 2013
The other day I was in a meeting with a CIO of a large
healthcare company. She sounded
exasparated by the pressure her team was facing from end users who
seemed to know more about the latest devices available and the technology they
were using as compared to some folks in her team. “My users are getting ahead
of my team,” she said.
As if the incessant pressure on budgets, the inadequate
supply of difficlut skills to execute projects, and the tight rope walk to
manage different vendors was not enough, this new phenomenon of end users with
high expectations was driving her crazy.
For decades, the CIO has been the master geek in the
enterprise, holding the keys to secret chambers of technology, who decides what
technology is used by business – both the senior and the junior folks. His writ
was seldom challenged by users, because they didn’t know better and because
they didn’t have a choice.
That has changed completely in last couple of years. The
advent of mobility, the ipads, the reduction in bandwidth costs and reach of
internet has ensured that the equation between technology at home and
technology at work has changed irreversibly. A user has more choice of
technology, sometimes gets better speeds, and lesser restrictions when he works
from home as compared to the restricted environment he faces at work. The
younger generation entering the work force is demanding the same level of
flexibility and not settling for less. The lower ranks are rebelling against IT.
In addition to this, all the XaaS options available to
business means they can meet their own needs by directly going to cloud
bypassing the IT and the CIO. This has made IT vulnerable to the senior execs
who control budgets and who now have altenative options to compare the IT costs
and performance. The higher ranks which at best viewed IT with skepticisim,
have more choice and are questioning IT more aggressively than before. When it
comes to mobility and ipads, the senior executives and CXOs are joining the
lower ranks in demanding IT deliver on all their expectations of flexibility
and user choice.
In the fast moving goods market, the consumer who has
hundreds of choices sets the agenda.
Enterprise IT which was in its cocoon so far, now has to deal
with the consumer who has entered the skin of the end user, and turned him into
a demanding “en”sumer who is getting to set a difficult agenda for the
enterprises IT teams to follow.
What exactly is the user demanding, and how is IT reacting to
this dynamic agenda of the “en”sumer?
posted by Anirudh Joshi @ 7:14 PM,
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