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ATOMThe Corporatising of Consumer Technology
Added by Chris Gabriel, 11 months ago.
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I recently authored a report into the technology expectations of 609 of the UK's 13-17 year old at University and at future employment. As I think we would all expect, today's youth have a high usage of consumer devices and internet services such as instant messaging (91% use it at least once a week, 50% use it everyday), and 71% regularly use video and microphone to communicate with contacts.
When the 609 individuals where questioned on their use of online content we found a high participation, 47% having read from somebody else's Blog, and 35% having written their own Blog entries. You can imagine that the publishing and viewing of online videos was also extremely high.
A journalist then asked me if this meant that Corporate IT needed to be ‘consumerised'? I said I thought not, but that IT departments need to take account of emerging or existing consumer technologies and ensure that they are ready, in this case to harness this new generation's propensity to use consumer technologies, to the advantage of the business. My contention was that mistakes will be made and the sooner IT departments can jump into a new consumer technology the more likely they will be of delivering a valuable and robust business solution in the future.
My example was the Blog which given this is a Blog entry is pertinent.
There is a wealth of data suggesting that Blogs successfully harness the thoughts of individuals. Companies that rely on innovation can use Blogs to breed communication and collaboration. However, we also know that individuals are not adverse to externalising thoughts best kept to themselves or for divulging information that the business would rather keep to a small group for commercially sensitive or legal reasons.
Therefore, the innovation part of the business wants Blogs, the legal side of the business is more reluctant and reserved about this free flow of thoughts and ideas. IT will at some point be asked to deliver the solution, so at some point the toe has to go into the water.
Recognising that 70% of most IT budgets is directed at keeping the lights on and only 30% (if your highly efficient in the back office) goes towards innovation how does the average IT department cope with assessing new technologies the business may not even know it wants yet? If you know the emergence of the Blog or Wiki or whatever is coming, but nobody has yet asked you for one, do you spend valuable resources trialling consumer technologies to prepare your business or sit back and wait?
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chris gabriel, 11 months ago
A good illustration Victoria of the expectations of service levels as we shift from being a consumer to an employee. I would hesitate to suggest that VOIP take up is steady rather than hyper because of the massive investment already made in traditional telephony systems in most businesses, and when the old phone system is due for renewal VOIP takes center stage now. But, your right, we expect less robustness from consumer services than we do corporate ones, but will we in the future. Our research into the 13 - 17 year olds suggests to me that IT departments will have to balance out the levels of service required with the number of services required. This may come from making our infrastructures less complex, enabling more innovation. It's shifting some of the time and money from the 70 lights on to the 30% innovation that will enable these new services, and allow IT departments to worry less about keeping the lights on in the data center and lighting up the imagination of the users.
Mandy Shaw, 11 months ago
That's a great question, Victoria. This, in one form or another, has been an issue ever since websites became more than just brochure-ware: who does the web team work for, the IT department, the marketing department, or neither? I have seen relations break down completely on occasion, but getting this right (and there are many factors influencing the decision) can have a massive effect on the success or otherwise of an organisation's web initiatives. And in relation to Web 2.0 technologies there's probably an argument for including HR in the mix as well ...
Victoria Furness, 11 months ago
I would have thought one of the problems is that quite a few organisations are still yet to take up technologies that consumers have been happy with for a while - look at the corporate use of VoIP compared to home Skype users, for instance. What I've also found is that many of these Web 2.0 technologies tend to fall under the remit of the new media team, rather than the IT department. Or is this typically not the case in your experience?