One of the major current debates is about the CIOs’ difficulty in finding suppliers that are suitable to their expectations.
The IT scenario has been transforming, ceasing to be a responsive area and, increasingly, being strategically within the organizations, to act preventively and generating business value. The CIO today answers directly to the CEO and CFO. Much more than knowing technology, the area decision makers must have a strategic profile to align the direction of the technology sector to the business of the company.
One of the great mistakes of suppliers is to reach the CIO without a prior study on the business of potential customer and without first listening to what the organizational challenges faced by them are. The CIO does not want to know what the features of the solutions offered or differentials of the supplier are. They want to know how the vendor will solve their problem. They have a very large demand for services and need partners to help supply them without the need to increase fixed costs with more structure, and without losing quality.
Another major concern is to maintain the team from the beginning to the end of the project. The IT department suffers from shortage of manpower and staff turnover is very common. A policy of retaining talents is key to a relationship of trust between the customer and the supplier. A project with a lot of involved staff turnover generates what is the third major complaint from CIOs: project delays.
A well executed and timely project generates benefits for both sides. Both the customer must provide sufficient tools for its implementation as the vendor must comply with the scope of the agreed project. And by what is observed in the market, the two parties have been having difficulty in meeting these requirements.
At OpServices, within our ten years of experience developing technology solutions for IT governance in enterprises, we notice that to be competitive we need to do much more than the customers expect. The technology supplier should surprise the customer. It is necessary to convince the market about the importance of using tracking metrics that show the transparency of the IT area to the other sectors. It is necessary that the business indicators are visible to decision-makers who do not have time anymore to analyze endless reports.
Suppliers should, through their experience in different verticals, contribute with their expertise in mapping customer business KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) to offer ways to solve the problem effectively and quickly. It is a target of OpServices Always to always seek creative alternatives to problems, even if it means to follow a different path and having to get out of our comfort zone.
