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IT Credibility

by Johanna

When it comes to the expertise needed on e-business teams, skills that come to mind immediately include:

• Understanding of the business
• Liaison with sales
• Writing for the web

Absent from this list is IT expertise. e-Business teams today do a balancing act between Marketing and IT, and many are closer to marketing than they are to IT. Some could even be called Web marketers, not technical Web developers. The implementation aspects often fall to IT, and e-business focuses on having a good relationship with IT.

What does it mean to have a good relationship with IT? kasina has spent the past few months envisioning, developing, and implementing a Web forum where our clients post questions and engage in a dialogue with each other, and with us. As an observer of the building process for the forum, I gained a new perspective on the development process needed for the Web.

Within kasina we have computer science degrees, IT backgrounds, and on-the-job experience in dealing with the nitty gritty of technical Web site development. Personally, I have a background in finance and economics, and on-the-job experience in strategic planning research and consulting, which means I have little credibility with IT and Web developers when discussing time and effort. For example, when our outsourced IT partner quoted 3 days to enhance the forum, it was extremely valuable to have a colleague who knew that the changes should only take 1 day (actually, it should've taken 20 minutes). "A good relationship" with IT, coupled with a more in-depth knowledge of the technical aspects of the Web, meant that he could call them back and demand a faster turnaround.

While e-business still needs to answer to the business units and senior executives, and should avoid doing technical implementation better left to IT, having expertise on e-biz teams at both a strategic level and a technical level would allow the group to better succeed in the balancing act.