With today’s businesses putting a greater focus on cloud technology, there are some big changes within organizational structure, especially within IT departments. Deciding on what cloud technology to invest in when, and planning implementations are all important decisions being made. However, it is important to take into account the structure of your IT department.

Traditionally, IT teams have always been important, but they weren’t too deeply involved in the corporate planning process. In today’s world however with new cloud technologies emerging, IT teams have a greater involvement in decision making, as they help to manage the new systems that effect many or all departments within a company. Microsoft posted a great infographic which describes three different IT structures in a cloud-centric era. In today’s blog, we will go through each one of them in brief, but if you want to read more about them, you can check the infographic out here:

Decentralization

• Daily operations and decisions are delegated from top-management down to the middle and lower level managers
• Pros: allows for long-term planning and empowers employees
• Cons: can be difficult to manage IT spend, and operations may not fully align with company strategic goals on all levels

Customer-Centric

• Approaches technology like services where the IT team becomes the bridge between internal processes and outsourced vendors to focus on customer experience
• Pros: if done right, increased customer retention and satisfaction, empowers the IT team and encourages creativity
• Cons: can be chaotic, create more work and IT team would be required to have greater “people skills” instead of a greater focus on only technical knowledge

Strategic Steering Arm

• IT department appoints a strategic team or role to discover and communicate how new technology can better serve employees within the organization
• IT team has greater involvement in strategic decision making and corporate planning
• Pros: focuses on a bigger company picture, helps the IT department understand company’s strategic plans
• Cons: can lead to disagreements between competing priorities, tensions around reporting levels and configuration

How you organize your IT structure within your organization is up to you and can be dependent upon things such as the industry you operate in or your company goals. However, as cloud technology is becoming more prevalent across many industries, it is important to consider a strategy that will enable your organization to support this.

True Sky can be implemented on-premise or as a cloud-based software. We can help simplify your company’s planning budgeting and forecasting processes and help you understand the IT requirements. Give us a call today at 1 855 878 3759 or visit our website www.truesky.com