Marketing IT Operations: Part I -- If You Don't Do It, Who Will?

by Bill Keyworth

IT organizations devote significant attention to delivering the technology and processes that ensure the achievement of business objectives. It's what we do in IT. It's the recognition that drives our actions. It's our purpose for existing. Yet is it sufficient to simply deliver value without any executive recognition for that contribution? IT best practices require that we not only deliver on the promise of IT, but that we also take the necessary steps toward recognition of that value so that the business "buys IT." This marketing-style approach allows IT to remain adequately funded, gain support for technology investments, obtain backing for critical IT initiatives, and ensure responsiveness to our dependencies. In this two-part Executive Update series, we will explore a five-step process to achieve IT "market" effectiveness, focusing on the first step (market vision) here in Part I.