IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

4.3. Capturing demand and identifying opportunities

Demand for IT products and services originates from customers in the business in the form of ideas or opportunities, with high-level information on timing, costs and benefits (note that we'll use the logical word customers for now, regardless of whether this implies a client–vendor relationship or not).

At the one extreme – and unfortunately quite common – IT is simply an internal service provider operating under the traditional client–vendor model and focused on satisfying user requirements. In essence it is a passive order taker disconnected from the business and not involved in understanding what lies behind customer demand.

At the other extreme – and unfortunately not very common – IT is a strategic differentiator and is part of a joint IT/business group responsible for process improvement and business innovation. Here we would have account managers responsible for understanding customer demand and full IT participation in the decision-making and approvals process. This will be covered in more detail in Chapter 8 when discussing roles and responsibilities under the new business model, but at this stage let us focus on capturing and managing demand, regardless of how it occurs.

There are two categories of demand – planned and unplanned:

• Planned demand arises as part of the annual planning process, which results in the IT Plan (which is what IT is supposed to deliver) and the corresponding budget for the next financial year. ...