The next time that I hear about how IT departments want to drive to a standard, I will forward to them either this Elana Varon interview with Gary Hamel, famed business strategist, or just send them in the direction of his new book.
Hamel rightly points out in Varon's interview that too many IT organizations are moving toward a best practices model rather than a best for business model:
"So many companies are now running the same software platforms, whether Oracle or SAP or whatever. Increasingly, we rely on the same handful of offshoring companies or IT service companies. There are a whole lot of things that IT folks have to do to keep up as part of the IT arms race, but in the end the only thing that's really going to make a difference is whether you're using IT in a unique way to do unique things where you don't find any other benchmarks. If you ask the average CIO what percentage of his total budget and headcount is devoted to things that are unique to his industry, I think it's probably too small a number."
For every opportunity to optimize business operations, those IT departments are taking one step away from maximizing the unique attributes of the business. In telecommunications, management needs to focus their strategies, and budgets, on what will break them from the pack of the "established" telecos (ie AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Telefonica) and position them for a unique position or offering that will provide competitive advantage.
Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Elana Varon, Gary Hamel, Business Strategy
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