It was with both interest and amusement that I read Peter Eschbach's article "Communication and IT: Taming the Three-Headed Dog" in the September–October issue of Communication World. With interest, because I believe it raises some important issues about the relationship between communication and IT that are worth discussing and that often get overlooked. And with amusement, because as a director of IT at the agency where Mr. Eschbach works, I suppose that makes me the three-headed dog.
While I can't completely deny that we IT folks often think of ourselves in mythological terms, Mr. Eschbach suggests that we have a lot more control and influence than we actually do, and that our arguments against deploying new technologies are at times specious.
The truth of the matter is that while that may occasionally be the case, more often than not, we are influenced by the same resource constraints that face any business unit in any large company: time and money.
An organization's survival depends not only on its ability to connect and communicate with its various stakeholders, as Mr. Eschbach rightly states, but also on its efficiency and concomitant ability to maximize profits. And therein lies the challenge, because new technology tends to be expensive, and very often the costs are hidden.
Sure, we in IT like to toss around acronyms like TCO (total cost of ownership) and ROI (return on investment), but in my view these elements generally are not given enough consideration. It is not unusual for a new technology to require an investment in software licenses, hardware and supporting infrastructure, consulting costs, training for staff, and support and maintenance contracts and subscriptions. And how do you measure what you get in return? Is it really making or saving enough money to justify the investment? Too often we end up allocating an inordinate number of resources to technology solutions that by Mr. Eschbach's own admission are doomed to rapidly advancing obsolescence, and whose value is difficult to quantify.
Therefore I think our responsibility as technology decision makers is to have a complete understanding of the business need being addressed, so that we in turn can provide informed counsel to the people who are requesting the technology. We need to ask the following questions: Is this what you really want? Do you have an understanding of the costs and risks associated with this technology? What are you expecting to get in return?
Ultimately Mr. Eschbach and I are in agreement on his proposed solution: Talk to us. Involve IT in the planning process, the earlier the better. Because while the perception may be that we in IT are control freaks and nattering nabobs of negativism, the fact of the matter is, our barks are much worse than our bites.
