Yesterday, I read an article reporting about a company's potential plans to upgrade one of its key business applications. The article featured perspectives from the application's end users, management and of course, the IT organization that developed and now supports it. The dynamic at issue was the app's lack of compatibility across browsers.
When asked about the likelihood of a change, the company's IT director responded with the following:
"[My organization has] been shying away from upgrading a major version of [biz app] because every time we’ve done it, it’s been tremendously difficult." (emphasis added)
Super. And once again, we have another reason why
"IT doesn't matter."
While the end users could not understand why the application wouldn't run reliably on Safari and Chrome in this case, IT was not convinced it was necessary to change the app to support them. Of course, cross-browser compatibility is a thorny issue. We've explored the reasons why site owners need to consider multi-browser strategies, and considerations for getting there. In this instance, there may no real viable solution for improving this application's end-user experience with regard to browser support.
But saying that it won't be done because "it’s been tremendously difficult" exemplifies the challenges that IT continues to have with finding relevance in a cloudy, mobile, and increasingly consumerized IT landscape. Today, the end user matters more than ever. IT organizations that recognize this, inculcate a user-first approach into how they manage their portfolio as well as tool choices. They adopt standards that support user oriented approaches. And the good news for IT is that these standards and tools exist.
It's possible that the choice of words of this IT manager in this instance belies other realities. But on the surface, the sentiment provides exactly the motivation that will drive this IT organization's customers and business stakeholders to a competitive SaaS application.
The end-user makes IT matter
Making IT to matter means placing the user at the forefront of the priority matrix, from choices in platform to its ongoing monitoring. Your users are changing... rapidly. When an architecture cannot support the expectations today's user, it will not survive.
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