IT decision making goes sky high

Andrew Peddie extols the benefits of cloud for buyers of IT

As times get leaner and every business looks to make financial efficiencies, CEOs and other staff such as HR and procurement managers are researching the impact of technology change.

I believe that this is partly due to the proliferation of cloud-based business applications and partly due to the fact that CEOs are increasingly looking at the ways these applications and other technologies such as social networks, mobility and business process management might improve their business.

The cloud has been cited as a catalyst in this departure from traditional CIO decision making. CEOs are focusing less on the infrastructure around IT and more on the productivity of applications. The IT purchase has become, therefore, a business rather than a technology decision.

Once upon a time, the CIO was the main IT purchasing decision maker, with the final word on any major infrastructure, hardware or software decisions, aside from the budget sign-off by the CFO and CEO.

But CEOs have become more and more involved as business applications have become so heavily entrenched in business processes. Examples include the spread of social networks and mobile technologies, which have become more entrenched in core business processes such as marketing, sales and corporate communications.

These innovations have taken hold so quickly that CEOs failing to fully understand their use and their impact will miss out. Many businesses have missed the Facebook and Twitter boat, because others are using these tools for business gain.

Applications in the cloud have not only rendered the traditional in-house office server and IT support team redundant, but improved the effectiveness of businesses that implement them. The downtime, support costs and physical costs from running an in-house server are eliminated.

The cloud has enabled a more joined-up approach to delivering business efficiency. CRM, accounting, sales, ERP and e-commerce are intrinsically linked with no need for multiple data entry, saving businesses money, giving visibility of any business area from any location, and enabling quick decision-making based on this business intelligence.

As a result, CEOs are becoming more interested in decision making and operations to maximise the possible gains from implementing such systems. They are using business intelligence dashboards and cloud-hosted applications to inform their management decision making and increase their insight.

This increased involvement of board-level stakeholders in the IT purchasing process will expand to include HR directors, CFOs and procurement directors, as well as CIOs, so a more holistic purchasing decision can be made, based on the impact the technology will have on each business area.

Cloud-hosted applications delivered as part of a SaaS model are also enabling business and senior decision makers to be more flexible about their use of IT. They can assess the productivity of various business applications and focus on the return on investment they are getting from each one, as well as switch focus as business requirements change.

Cloud computing has also removed headaches associated with upgrading business software, as updates are automatic and the CIO no longer has to worry about security, storage or infrastructure failure.

This frees the CIO and others responsible for IT to concentrate on the practical benefits of the business applications in use. There is an opportunity for cloud vendors and resellers to offer consultative advice, support and training.

Andrew Peddie is owner and director of First Hosted