Recently, somebody challenged me to describe what it means to run IT like a business. This is what I came up with:
- Businesses have customers (not users).
- Businesses thrive by providing their customers with goods and services that their customers want at a cost those customers consider a value.
Sometimes we find ourselves providing services that our customers don’t want. That could mean we got ahead of ourselves and started providing a solution without first providing the consulting service that creates the desire to receive the service.
I’ve long held that what internal IT departments need more processes analogous to commercial enterprise. To some extent, frameworks like ITIL start to address customer satisfaction but there are still gaps in the realms of marketing, sales & product management.