Inside the world’s companies and government departments, IT organizations have traditionally focused on delivering to internal customers. This has created an environment where IT is expected to align the services it delivers with age-old business processes that have evolved over years of operation, and is focused on efficiency. Delivering innovation and new ideas has become fraught with unnecessary complexity and internal politics, and strategically IT remains a back-office function.
Meanwhile, in the outside world, things have changed. IT is now front of house, delivering to consumers via online and mobile apps, whose expectations are higher. IT is part of the customer relationship and, as a result, it is expected to deliver its service promise and for problems not to occur. Social media has meant that when there are problems, they occur publicly. In the time it can take to raise a trouble ticket on a service management system, a consumer problem can surge on Twitter and reach thousands, damaging an organization’s reputation. At the same time, organizations now have access to more information about their customers and services than ever before, which provides huge potential for transforming their services.