If you're a techie with no business acumen your days are numbered - that's the rather stark conclusion of analyst firm Gartner. The group's latest musings will make sober reading for anyone working at a purely technical level in an IT department. The gist of the document -- entitled IT Driven Investment is a thing of the past -- is that IT's role isn't simply about implementing technology anymore but 'brokering services and shaping business demand'.
If that sounds a bit woolly, that's because it is. But despite the clunky management speak, the analyst group claims to have identified some unambiguous changes affecting the industry. As IT becomes more vital to the overall performance of a business then consequently business will become a more fundamental part of IT, the theory goes. Companies can now live or die by their IT decisions - just look at Sainsbury's, which is rolling in the doldrums thanks in part to some dodgy management but also to the spectacular failure of its supply chain systems.
With this much riding on technology decisions, the concept of a closed IT department providing IT services to the rest of the company is slowly being eroded. Gartner maintains that those businesses that understand how to generate real advantage from fusing technology, business process design and business relationships will outperform those that do not by at least 15 percent per year.
"We predict that by 2008, 50 per cent of IT organisations will refocus on brokering services and shaping business demand, rather than delivering IT services directly," says John Mahoney, Gartner vice-president of IT Services and Management.
You may question how anyone can quantify these kinds of shifts so accurately but you can't ignore the underlying message. Other analyst firms concur with this fusion between business and IT and its impact on the hiring policy of some of the largest companies. Marianne Hedin, an analyst with researcher IDC, says companies like Accenture and IBM used to be more content to hire tech specialists separately from business consultants, but now they're looking for broader skills and more versatile workers.
"What they are looking for is a professional who can understand the technology issues that a company faces...and also understand what the business issues are, and be able to link the two," she says.
Talkback
Wonderful, so a techie needs to understand the business side. So does this mean instead of the 1 CIO, we now have, or need to have, an army of CIO's?
This is an unrealistic, and dangerous, outcome. While its great to have everyone so involved, I get the impression we are looking at a case of "too many chiefs not enough indians".
There will always be a need for skills at the coalface. And like so many other facets of life, you cant be an expert at everything...