Key thoughts: (full post)
- Ten years ago, many businesses did not consider IT to be a core competency. But it's strategic now. Like it or not, businesses are now forced to pay greater attention to IT. The attention economy is largely digital, and IT systems mediate the relationship between attention-hungry sellers and spoilt-for-choice buyers.
- When IT becomes strategic, we can no longer evaluate the success of IT efforts using IT metrics (e.g. did we deliver to plan?). Strategic IT has to make a difference to business outcomes. This needs much closer collaboration between IT and business than is typically afforded by outsourcing. It also needs cross-functional teams that span IT and business. Again, this is very difficult to achieve under the terms of a tightly worded outsourcing contract. Businesses that understand this new dynamic are bringing IT back in-house. They are outsourcing IT more selectively.