perspective One of the biggest challenges for IT leaders today is how to differentiate our organizations from the competition.
Most of us have achieved a reasonable core IT service--we all have Microsoft Office and dozens of servers, don't we? It's the next step that is that hardest--but also potentially the most rewarding.
We can beat competitors on quality or price but these are proven techniques that use buying power or process efficiencies--and with some effort we could all go down those routes.
What we need is something really different. Of course if you do come up with that something different you will be copied and your advantage may be short-lived, so you will need to maintain that lead, which can be addictive and expensive.
With that in mind, you need to be sure any idea you come up with is fully costed with real benefits. You need to add value to the client or customer process and be seen by them as an innovator. If it doesn't add something to the client process then you need to consider if it is worth doing. Remember, everything we do should benefit the customer.
You may be saying, 'That's great but how do you come up with the ideas in the first place?' Not all of us wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea and some of us that do can't remember it in the morning.
Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas and while those that are generated may not be all IT-related, it will do the CIO no harm to be seen to be leading on innovation.
I don't have the complete answer to this but I would like to throw out some thoughts about how to collect those new ideas:
The customer value chain
Understanding the business process, not just within your company but where it touches the customer, is a great way to start. Map the process as it relates to the customer, from how they place the order to what they do with the outcome. This may lead you to find that they do things with your service or product that you could do for them at no or little extra cost, saving them time and effort.
Listen to customers
Listen to customer feedback and look to fulfill their requirements where feasible. But don't just stop there--look beyond. Can you go the extra mile for little extra effort?
Supplier input
Ask your strategic suppliers to provide input to your innovation program. After all they are working in your marketplace and possibly with your competitors and your customers, so they may have a view to the gaps in some of the services. They may also be able to relate the market dissatisfactions, which could lead you to new ideas.
The internal innovation portal
Create a Web-based portal to encourage employees across your organization to submit ideas. Create a process for review and feedback of ideas--and make the process visible to all. Use this portal as the one place where all ideas are captured and managed.
The external innovation portal
Give your clients access to an innovation portal so they can feed in ideas about what they like and don't like--or how you could improve your product or service. Keep this separate from the internal one but ensure you give the client feedback on their input. Use as many of their ideas as possible!
Web 2.0
Consider using the power of Web 2.0 to help generate ideas. You could use blogs and wikis as part of the innovation portal or another vehicle, such as the intranet or departmental Web pages. Starting discussions around customer service or new products can get the whole team thinking, which can lead to new ideas.
The external marketplace
There is a wealth of untapped ideas out in the marketplace. Talk to people at conferences and exhibitions and you will be surprised at the number of ideas that start to formulate. Somebody else's experience or idea will start you thinking about how a trend, technology or product could be useful to your business--or may start a new train of thought leading to several ideas.
Having hopefully collected lots of ideas, make sure there is one place where they are recorded--your innovation portal, for instance. Then be sure to prioritize them and identify cost, resource and benefits.
Discuss them internally and then take the important ones to the customer and get their feedback. This will not only tell you if the innovations will benefit the customer but the customer will see you as an innovator, which will put you ahead of your competition. If you also deliver the innovation your street value will increase even further.
Last but not least, try to ensure you do a post-review of innovations delivered and in particular the benefit derived. If it helped your company to win more business or increased the bottom line, that's a great advert for more of the same.
Peter Birley is director of IT at law firm Browne Jacobson LLP. This article first appeared on ZDNet Asia's sister site, Silicon.com.
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