Network executives and staff need to adapt to survive.
Experts say Minneapolis’ situation is becoming more common as IT evolves. According to recent research from Gartner, by 2010 most IT departments will be 30% smaller than they were in 2005, due in large part to outsourcing. And IT will become much more bu
Kaiser decided to outsource, and he did it in a big way. He sold off most of his IT assets to Unisys, which now runs Minneapolis’ networks, servers, desktops and help desk. And as part of the deal, the IT staffers responsible for those areas were shifted to Unisys. Although Kaiser bartered for a nice arrangement (Unisys was required to offer affected personnel a job at equal or better salaries and benefits), the staffers, some of whom had 20-year tenures with the city, were no longer a part of the city’s IT department. They were outsourced.
Who stays
Experts say Minneapolis’ situation is becoming more common as IT evolves. According to recent research from Gartner, by 2010 most IT departments will be 30% smaller than they were in 2005, caused in large part by outsourcing. IT is expected to become more business-oriented by 2010, with six of every 10 IT staffers assuming a business-facing role.
“That’s the key,” says Laurie Orlov, vice president and research director at Forrester Research and author of the recent report “Is There a Career Future in Enterprise IT?” “IT needs to become much smarter about the business they’re in, and that knowledge will be the thing that saves them from being outsourced,” she says.
The future IT staffer won’t be immersed in the back-room break/fix mentality, she says. Those who survive the push to outsourcing will be the ones who understand technology, with all its promise and limitations, but who also can readily see and communicate how technology applies to the business to solve problems.
“We still need specialists, but they’re far fewer in number. We’re looking more at honing a liberal arts mentality within the IT group,” says Brian Young, CIO at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., which has outsourced both its voice telecom and the networks supporting its residence halls.
Kaiser says his remaining IT staffers are all well-rounded and business focused. Four of his staffers are what he terms “service-delivery managers,” who are charged with monitoring and maintaining the outsourcing relationships. The rest are focused on higher-level IT duties, such as applications, network architecture and business-process redesign.
“Right now, I’m only hiring business analysts and business-process reengineering people,” he says. “Because for me it’s all about the big picture. You need to figure out how the business is being accomplished today, and then if there is a better way of accomplishing that business. And does that better way lend itself to automation or to technology? Those are the people who are in demand.”
Orlov agrees. “Companies will outsource the tactical work potentially but not the management of those vendor relationships, not the negotiating of contracts with those vendors, not the application of what the vendors are doing toward the business problems of the company, and most definitely not the suggestion of innovative ways of using technology in the various business groups in the company,” she says. “That’s where IT will always have a role.”
Evolving your skill set to meet the demands of this business-savvy IT future is not that difficult, experts say.
For example, Creighton’s Young says that he uses a leadership coach who trains his staff to be more business-savvy. “I’m a huge believer in leadership skills, so everyone here, whether they’re a programmer, a Web designer or a sys admin, has the opportunity to go through leadership development,” he says. The results have been startling. “Folks here have just blossomed into wonderful leaders who have now taken on projects and project management and moved from an entry role into a midlevel or senior leadership role. It’s been a huge benefit to them — and to the university.”
Unfortunately, in tight budget times, those programs are usually the first to get cut, he says. “But we really need to rethink that,” he says. “That’s a short-sighted view of professional development.”
Cross-training experience
Others say gaining business expertise doesn’t need to be an added expense and can be gained through mentoring or even business-side job rotation. For example, Scott Bright, a researcher at Forrester who works with Orlov, says successful IT staffers of the future will most likely have had zigzag careers, in which they move seamlessly from the IT side to the business side and back again.
“We see people rotating from the business side to IT,” he says, noting a recent case in which nurses who had gained expertise in certain systems went to the IT side to help implement and augment those systems. “They had gained expertise through hands-on experience and were able to leverage that experience in IT,” he says. “And we also see rotation from IT to the business, providing IT with more depth and knowledge of how the business works through daily interaction and work experience while on the business side.”
Bright says the forward-thinking CIO will ensure staffers are trained in the business and that in many cases they will formalize these mentoring and rotation plans. “It should become almost a checkpoint over the course of your IT career, prior to promotions or major moves within IT, that you move into the business to broaden your skill base and understand what the business is doing.”
In the end, Kaiser says this view of the future is something IT should embrace, not fear. “You shouldn’t view outsourcing as a threat,” he says. “Instead, look at it as a challenge. Get yourself in shape to be able to do more business-oriented tasks like manage an outsourcing contract or becoming the company interface to the outsourcer. Those things can never be outsourced.”
And they’re far more interesting in terms of a career than the typical technologycentric position. “You get to keep an eye on the future and emerging technologies, and you make sure you are abreast of what’s happening in the industry,” he says. “That way, you become more focused on what you do with technology rather than technology itself.”
Cummings is a freelance writer in North Andover, Mass. She can be reached at jocummings@comcast.net.
