Enterprise IT must reinvent itself in the As-a-Service Era

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Unfortunately, in today's environment, enterprise IT is no longer seen as the optimal organization to quickly achieve business outcomes, nor to drive innovation, according to Accenture Strategy research.

In the as-a-service era, with IT and business capabilities available on demand, business unit leaders and managers are increasingly contracting with cloud-based service providers, with or without the support of enterprise IT.

Such workarounds could be putting the business at risk however. IT must reinvent itself to drive technology-led business solutions as a service broker.

In this new role, IT can not only protect the business but also help it achieve greater outcomes.

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Everyone thinks they’re a CIO
Business unit leaders are increasingly contracting with cloud-based service providers, with or without the support of enterprise IT. In effect, these leads are acting as CIOs by providing their own technology-led business solutions.

Enterprise IT needs to renew itself
At many companies, IT is no longer seen as a provider of essential business outcomes. Seventy-seven percent of organizations feel that the IT organization lacks the skill sets for an as-a-service world. Forty-two percent believe that enterprise IT takes longer to implement solutions.

Bypassing enterprise IT could be putting the business at risk
Business users are likely to underestimate the challenges and risks of service/data integration. Just over half of organizations said there are risks involved with bypassing IT including security, cost overruns and delayed delivery. Enterprise IT has a critical balancing act: Enabling services and platforms that improve productivity, while protecting against fragmentation and security threats.

IT is dead. Long live IT!

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Enterprise IT can reinsert itself into the stream of as-a-service provisioning:

Self-test your IT organization
Assess your IT organization and its performance as a service broker.
Adopt a startup mentality
In an as-a-service environment, enterprises should adopt practices to move at the same speed as a startup—while still leveraging their larger scale.
Don’t let the old organization kill off the new one
Nurture the disruptors, offering new business models, processes, tools and structures.
Act like an external service provider, not a monopoly
IT should view itself as an organization that competes with other providers.