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While reading an article in Computerworld about how to sell IT to the business, I was one again reminded about the scarcity of CIOs who take every advantage of marketing the full breadth of services offered by their IT organizations. This goes beyond selling the value of the IT organization to business leaders and decision-makers, which is also critical for CIOs to communicate. Marketing IT also includes opportunities for CIOs to reinforce the inherent knowledge of a company’s inner workings and its business charter that’s imbued in the IT staff.

Of course, this only scratches at the surface of what IT leaders can do with an effective marketing strategy. For instance, how many IT organizations do you know of that provide digital or print brochures which break down the various services they offer along with the unit costs? Not many, I bet. And while IT services catalogues aren’t required by all IT organizations, there is an obvious need for CIOs to push internal IT services more aggressively as cloud and SaaS-based support become more viable options for business leaders to consider, helping to fuel rogue IT spending.

Those CIOs who do market internal IT services say they're often able to demonstrate to business leaders how competitive the IT organization is on a cost basis with external providers. Plus, IT organizations that post IT unit costs make it easier for business leaders to determine the costs of application development and other services upfront.

I don’t know if there’s a way to quantify this but on an anecdotal level, I’ve seen a fairly even split between IT leaders who choose to run the IT organization like a business and those who don’t. There are merits to both arguments. Surely the structure of the IT organization and how it’s designed to support the business plays a big role in determining which approach works best for CIOs.

But regardless of whether the IT organization is centralized or decentralized, there are many benefits to marketing the capabilities of an IT organization which many CIOs continue to underutilize. It’s going to become even more critical for CIOs to become effective marketers and communicators as they fight to validate their relevancy within the enterprise.

Comments (2)

	1. 04-21-2010 21:06
	I did my first internal IT advertising back in 1983. We were printing corporate phone books (remember those?) and used the inside front and back covers to print lists of services and service levels, plus an 'order form' for requesting standard services. It was a big hit and sparked many interesting conversations about cost and about all the things we could do for our 'customers.'    I've done several IT brochures (org chart, numbers to call, etc.) and once did a glossy corporate handout showing major workstreams we were doing for a corporate re-engineering program.    And back when Help Desks were new we had printed with the Help Desk phone number and sent one to every employee.    Depending on the corporate culture and the size of the IT initiatives, internal marketing can serve a real purpose. Registered

Wayne Sadin

	2. 04-27-2010 15:07
	Wayne: What you described seems pretty advanced for 1983 standards. I'd be interested to know whether IT marketing at the organizations you've worked for seemed to have had a sustainable impact on how the IT organization was viewed and treated by other parts of the business;. Registered

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