OREANDA-NEWS. December 01, 2015. “Today, digital technologies render organizations increasingly transparent, thereby reducing the layers between stakeholders. Similarly, customer profiles and expectations are rapidly changing as mobility and social collaboration become table stakes,” writes Nachiket Deshpande. “As a result, enterprises must meld their internal structures—both human and technology resources—to more effectively serve internal users (employees) and external users (end customers).” Excerpts:

“To excel in this new world, companies must elevate IT from a business support function to one in which IT drives the business. This means the CIO and the head of digital business roles will eventually converge to help companies fend off the advancers and digital native companies. In addition, together they will convert the massive amounts of transactional and interactional data generated by modern digital organizations into operational and market insights that inform, if not power, IT-led business models.

In order to do so, organizations must deliver experiences that excite customers, internal users and partners. By calling information from disparate IT resources, organizations can merge siloed organizational functions and enable a collaborative approach across IT disciplines. In turn, by also leveraging big data and behavioral analytics, organizations can deliver seamless, consistent and insightful user experiences via a service desk that tells them the system understands who they are and can anticipate their information and service needs.

With an ever-increasing number of devices, applications and data usage, customer excitement attained through user services will soon become a differentiator for leading organizations. Organizations need to bring the spheres of value creation and value consumption closer together to build successful business models centered on serving and exciting these two user groups—internal and external.

Customer excitement is gaining momentum among CIOs who want to leverage the goodness of IT consumerization, the entry of millennials into the workplace, and changing internal customer expectations. IT organizations, including traditional service desks, need to redefine their goals, realign their units, functions and roles, and become the enablers and drivers of sustained user excitement. Delivering heightened value through better digital user experiences will lead to top-line growth and bolster the brand.”