Ecosystems presented the closing keynote at the Minnesota Software User Forum, hosted by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, this week. The keynote, titled “Conveying the Value of IT Investments,” was presented by Chad Quinn, President of Ecosystems. The keynote aimed to provide IT leaders with information and research to become brokers of value in IT investment conversations within their organizations.
IT professionals gathered to discuss the latest IT innovation and share best practices on how to convey the value of IT to the business.
The VMO’s closing keynote discussed the value broker research, noting that IT leaders are now increasingly tasked with understanding the business value that IT creates. Not only must IT leaders understand the business value of IT, but they must also be able to effectively communicate value to various decision makers within the organization.
Several IT leaders in attendance shared some of their biggest challenges regarding IT value conversations:
- One IT leader was developing videos and other documents to incrementally assess value throughout an IT project.
- Another IT leader was working on identifying actions currently owned by the business that IT could enhance, but needed a way to justify IT’s involvement (even when IT would ultimately save the organization significant costs).
- Another IT leader discussed the importance of recognizing that some IT implementations may result in added hindrances to the business (e.g. setting up a firewall that requires a login in). However, it’s critical to show the business the value in these hindrances when compared to other possible outcomes, such as a security breach.
