Digitalization: IT departments must reinvent themselves

Data is the new gold - but IT will very soon no longer be the gold digger. As part of digitization, the demands on the IT department are changing as more and more processes in the company run automatically. Instead, complex networked, often external applications will dominate everyday operations. This means that the IT organization will have a fundamentally new role to play: away from being a problem-solving cost optimizer and toward becoming a creative business enabler.

Old-style IT departments cannot shape digitization

"We are experiencing a massive transformation in technologies, processes and ways of working. The opportunities are huge if we take everyone with us - especially the employees," emphasizes Mathias Hess. Mathias Hess is a digitization professional, interim manager and co-author of the book "Digital Insights - Digitization: 7 Views from the Field." "If you want to shape digitization, you have to overcome departmental boundaries and silo thinking," adds the interim manager, who has been on the move in the digital world for around a quarter of a century - in large national corporations, as CIO and IT director, and in responsible management positions at IT service providers. Overcoming silo thinking also means being open to cloud solutions and IT outsourcing and opening up one's own interfaces for customers or suppliers, for example. But the focus must also become more holistic internally. Only when every employee interacts and is involved and departmental boundaries cease to be communication boundaries can digitization succeed.

At present, many CEOs are still shying away from the step into a fully digitized future, the expert observes. Others would fail to implement due to a lack of analysis in advance and the absence of a coherent concept. "While the corporate IT department, faced with the sheer endless range of technical solutions, is faced with the question of which IT solutions best fit the new business model and offer the most benefits for operations and customers, the management is faced with the task of developing a company-wide digitization strategy that takes into account both customer needs and market requirements and thus becomes an essential part of the corporate strategy," says Hess.

Think less from the problem

What is needed are big concepts and visions; it is a matter of shaping all business relationships and processes with the involvement of customers and all participants in the value chain, not of making small repairs to the existing system. Anyone who takes digitization seriously has to think this way. Many IT departments reach their limits in this way of thinking. This is the job of the management. Digital transformation is about the future direction of the company. Here, the IT department can provide support in the form of expertise, but it should not become the decision-maker. "Many IT departments think too much in terms of the problem and not enough in terms of the solution," says Hess.

Digitalization requires targeted change management that involves employees and actively integrates them on the path to digital transformation. The fears of employees and other stakeholders regarding new business models would have to be taken seriously and proactively addressed. "Agile corporate management, open communication with employees and their early involvement in the digitization process, as well as a healthy culture of error are essential for this," Hess emphasizes.

Practical guide for SMEs

In "Digital Insights - Digitization: 7 Perspectives from the Field," seven successful interim managers report directly from the field. They shed light on megatrends and technical innovations, address entrepreneurial, process-related, ethical, social and global issues as well as the relationship between managers and employees. The seven authors come from a variety of industries and disciplines and bring together all their expertise in "Digital Insights," making it useful for small and medium-sized companies. The book is intended as a practical guide, providing valuable food for thought as well as tangible tips. The value of the work lies in the interdisciplinary composition of the authors and in the easy-to-understand communication of the messages. The book is not technological gobbledygook, but offers concrete support for the first steps in the company.

The authors Elmar M. Gorich (Business 2030: the business models of the future), Mathias Hess (From IT to change management - the human factor of digitization), Matthias Koppe (Digitization is networking), Eberhard Müller (Competitive through customer-focused value-added systems), Uwe Seidel (Anything but standard: Digitization needs a clear strategy), Bettina Vier (Juggling work: customer centricity in B2B relationships) and Ludger Wiedemeier (Governance and transformation) speak plainly and paint a realistic picture of the opportunities and possibilities, but also of the challenges and risks. They provide insights from the hard practice of dozens of projects in medium-sized companies and international corporations and look at the topic of digitization from very different angles. All authors are members of the "Digitalization and Industry 4.0 Working Group" of the umbrella organization German Interim Management (DDIM) and are among the most recognized experts in their respective fields.

"Digital Insights - Digitization: 7 Views from the Field" is published by Best Practice Verlag and costs 39.90 euros. More information