Tomorrow’s IT solutions incorporate agility and brand experience instead of just focusing on rote, back-office reliability. Bimodal IT is an emerging concept that is challenging IT professionals and business leaders to rethink their information technology strategy.
Looking to make your IT work as a strategic lever? Here’s a quick crash course on bimodal and its potential.
Traditional business IT emphasizes long-term, strategic planning that delivers carefully calculated results. Today, most companies focus on cost and use their IT budgets to ensure applications and systems remain operational and efficient. In this way, traditional IT is structured like a marathon, focusing on a long-term goal and reaching it in a conservative way.
While a steady, safe approach offers stability and often leads to success, agility and flexibility are almost nonexistent. If a system is incapable of meeting new challenges and requirements as they appear, full potential isn’t realized.
Effective business IT isn’t possible with just “marathoners.” To meet changing customer demands, they need the support of nimble “sprinters” that deliver meaningful short-term results.
Bimodal IT is characterized by these two modes – marathon and sprint – working in tandem. A flexible team focused on brand value, able to meet quick turnaround times and excited by new projects is a critical strategic lever for your organization.
An effective sprint mode boosts your bottom line by:
It’s important to realize that the sprint team doesn’t replace or supersede your marathon team. Long-term strategy is still your business IT backbone. However, it’s highly likely that one mode alone doesn’t meet all of your business’ needs.
Consider this: 38% of current IT spending is actually outside of IT. The reason? Marketing, HR, sales and other departments increasingly act like tech startups within their own organizations. Because these business units are close to the customer, they adapt to rapidly meet demands. Unsurprisingly, they need IT that supports innovative approaches and builds on new opportunities quickly, as opposed to slow-moving IT concerned only with cost and productivity.
Although widespread bimodal IT adoption is still a ways off, it’s important to prepare for the future now. As customers continue to benefit from increasingly sophisticated, engaging digital experiences, businesses that can’t adapt and implement agile IT will suffer.
Is your business looking for a strategic addition to your current IT solutions? Set up a free consultation with a PointMan today and see how you can take your system from good to great.