Technology

CompTIA Report: Collaboration Defining Tech at Enterprise Level

A new report from CompTIA suggests that no one department usually owns the technology mandate within an organization. Often, the IT department is helping everyone else out.

When it comes to implementing enterprise technology, collaboration is going to be the name of the game going forward.

That’s the take of CompTIA, whose new report, Building Digital Organizations [registration required], makes the case that digital work within organizations is becoming more complicated—in part because there’s so much of it these days—but that IT departments have the ability to play a central role in that work.

In other words: IT isn’t just a support role anymore.

“IT has become a direct contributor to business results and must now consider broad corporate demands, especially as various business units are able to drive their own technology initiatives,” the association’s report states. “At the same time, the basic foundation of operational technology must remain in place and remain highly cost-conscious.”

A few key points in the research, based on an online survey of 350 American businesses:

Both process and results defined by tech: More than 40 percent of respondents said their business processes are enabled by technology, while an additional 39 percent said technologies such as the cloud and mobile platforms drive outcomes for their businesses.

Processes still prove challenging: Trying to maintain a proper device management process has not been easy for many businesses, and it is described as the largest challenge in front-end management. (Interestingly, according to the report, corporations are starting to prefer more control of devices, moving away from bring-your-own-device schemes.) But it’s not the only one—headaches such as software management and security also tend to gum up the works.

Room to share: Perhaps the most important part of the report, however, discusses the breakdown of responsibilities between departments. Simply put, things that would have exclusively fallen under IT’s purview are now being done collaboratively. While data security and the hunt for new technologies remain more IT-centric in many organizations, departments are now more likely to split discussions around workforce tools, business objectives, and the technical details that go into business systems, while business insights often remain the focus of the originating department.

In a news release, CompTIA Senior Director of Technology Analysis Seth Robinson said the report highlighted that outside departments have become more willing to work with the world of IT essentially because they learned the hard way.

“Adventures in ‘rogue IT’ have shown business units that there is more to a technology solution than they initially assumed,” Robinson said in the release. “IT professionals are changing their behaviors, too, learning more about business objectives and goals so they can help drive strategies and serve as an educational resource on technical matters.”

The report is available to CompTIA members at the association’s website. (Registration is free, by the way.)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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