Consumerization of IT Services
As a consumer, I expect everything that I get to be absolutely flawless, I expect everything that is delivered to me to be absolutely thought through. For instance, I see an ad that talks about this new app that’s a new big thing and will solve some of my day-to-day problems, I install it with a lot of excitement. After a day, I notice that the app is draining my battery quickly and phone heats up when I am using the app. What do you think I will do on the third day? What do you think anyone would do? We will immediately uninstall the app no matter how good it is. Another example, let’s say the app requires a sign up, and the sign up process is asking for several details and does not provide any social media login capability. As a consumer, I would either uninstall the app or never open it thinking one fine day when I have time, I will complete the registration. What happened in both of these scenarios, the app was either not used or not kept.
IT Services organization are claiming to help their customers build the next million dollar idea. But if the idea that was developed by the IT Services organization does not tackle the basics we spoke about a moment ago, the customer will never ever realize his dream. Long gone are the days when the Business and IT would work independently. Just like IT might not be thinking about the business implications and viability of the idea, business may not be focusing on aspects like SEO, user interface, workflow, ease of use, etc. IT Services organization has to start working with the customers as a partner and challenge the customer on things they would not have thought about. When developing a solution, it is important for each and every member of the team to think, “Will I use this product myself?”, “Is this appealing to me a consumer?”. If the answer to these is a “No” or “May be”, the team needs to immediately look into the reasons, even without the customer having to investigate it, because the fact is, the customer may not really be able to identify the core issues all the time.
The fundamental principle that the teams are expected to understand in the organization is “Think like a consumer”. Customer is the king by the king may not know everything. To be trustworthy, it is important that the IT team gives the customer the confidence that it is thinking of things that he did not think about and the team is not waiting for the customer to come back and point out things that could have been identified by them earlier.