Information technology has officially become a mature profession. It now has good old days.
There is a growing sense that as IT has become institutionalized and, through the chief information officer, positively boardroom and bottom-line, much of the innovation has been driven out of the calling. So say the champions of the "good old days", the past decade or so has turned IT into a systematic compliance-and-enablement engine, given little time, budget, or purview to do anything except maintain existing systems, introduce the bare minimum of new technology, and focus largely on certification and compliance issues, be it the ISO flavor of the month, Y2K, or Sarbanes-Oxley.
Meanwhile, in our little CRM neck of the woods, it seemed for a while that it was all anybody and everybody could do to encourage companies to keep IT as far away from CRM as possible. Not only the third-party integrators, who of course had their own agenda, but vendors and analysts as well were quick to point out how IT couldn't, wouldn't, and shouldn't understand the nuances and business agendas connected with a serious CRM project and were best left—at best—in the maintenance and plumbing.
Now, however—perhaps because companies are understanding the wisdom of the old "give a man a fish versus teaching him to fish" parable—IT is being spoken of more often as an integrator and CRM consultancy of first resort. Although I certainly sympathize with the number of compliance challenges facing IT, becoming a diversified and trusted consultant is a wise move for the CIO's office.
It's no secret that the nuts and bolts of information technology are becoming extremely commoditized, with outsourcers both down the street and a hemisphere away clamoring to take over the drudgery of the data center. Becoming not only the keepers of the root password but the spreadhead of better business process will help "save" the concept of internal IT by transforming it—or, if you believe in the "good old days", restoring it.
The groundwork for such a system is already in place. Many successful IT organizations already employ a chargeback system for funding their operations, billing business unit clients at a competitive rate for essential services. Branching out to chargeback not only fee-for-service operations but also projects with real business ROI attached would be a logical, and welcome, extension of the model. Alternately, CRM projects could be structured to share the credit for associated gains (such as improved loyalty or cross-sell rates) between the business unit and the IT department, advancing the overall business goals while building equity for the CIO's team.
Just about everybody wins using this model. The company builds mastery of its own business improvement processes and keeps much of the heavy lifting internal. Dedicated CRM consultancies may still be needed to help with vision and some of the finer points of operation and implementation. IT organizations get to focus on more challenging and valuable tasks, and outsourcers get their piece of the server maintenance pie. It works very well—on the screen, in any case. Rather than let themselves become marginalized into oblivion, I suggest that IT professionals with an eye towards making meaningful business improvements give this plan serious consideration.