Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 09 | Page 43

FEATURE: IT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS “Cloud technologies and managed services enable IT to spend less time managing technical aspects and more time focusing on business capabilities, outcomes, performance and differentiation.” activity into line with the realities of the business context. The result is a reduction in waste – a leaner IT project portfolio and more business-focused work queues for individual IT experts. Armed with a greater understanding of the business ecosystem, IT people are empowered to spot, propose and act on opportunities that will improve performance. Attribute #2: Aggressive outsourcing strategy Most IT departments are spread too thinly – across too much complexity – to www.intelligentcio.com support business transformation at a pace that works in the digital age. The natural instinct is to increase headcount instead of reducing complexity. High-performing IT organisations are lean; they outsource aggressively to rationalise bloated legacy infrastructure, reduce complexity and unravel the legacy headaches that cause so much firefighting and prevent agility. They right-size the IT estate to focus on what really matters to the business: differentiation. The management of commodity IT services is farmed out to third party service vendors who harness specialisation and economies of scale to deliver solutions that are both more robust and more cost-efficient than an internal IT function could possibly provide. High-performing IT organisations are forward-thinking and not rooted in the past. When the ‘bigger is better’ legacy mindset is left behind, it makes sense to utilise the now-mature technology and services markets to outsource the technology management overheads that are hollowing out the IT operations budget. Deloitte’s 2015 ‘Global CIO Survey’ found that 57% of the IT budget is spent on keeping the lights INTELLIGENTCIO 43