As an IT manager, you know your team works hard. However, IT departments are sometimes misunderstood even within their own organizations. C-level executives don’t always comprehend the significance of complex technologies, and how they relate to business results.
The Common Struggles
As your organization continues to grow, and IT becomes an increasingly critical component of daily operations in all departments, it’s important to start thinking more about IT as a business driver.
By recognizing and documenting the business impact of your employees, you can make them feel more appreciated and improve your communication about IT’s performance with C-level executives. This can help you:
- Secure additional budgets for new technologies
- Make the case for new hires
- Improve the capabilities and efficiency of your existing team
However, many IT professionals at mid-size companies struggle to organize business-related information and manage team workflow. This is often due to using multiple tools and systems to keep track of daily tasks, responsibilities and major projects.
For example, you may use your email system to share tasks and due dates, a help desk ticketing system to manage support and bug tickets, a separate time-tracking application for time recording, and spreadsheets to manage major project milestones and tasks.
But, do you have a centralized dashboard that provides an overall view of everything your department has going on? Or more importantly, do you have an integrated system that provides all the functions listed above?
Managerial insight must become more sophisticated to stay productive and showcase IT’s benefits to company executives. Often, this equates to more powerful, insightful management tools.
Better Tools Improve Management Capabilities
Let’s take a look at evidence you can gather using a complete work management software solution, which can help you your case to the C-level.
- Ability to track the three pillars of work, meaning you can keep the right type of work with the right people. This will surge productivity and bring structure to your team. Work can no longer fall through the cracks, and each person will know his or her role distinction.
- Improved managerial insight and oversight gives you more control and awareness as a leader. You can assign tasks, run reports and have clear views of all projects and their statuses. From a team-management perspective, you can also identify top performers or weak links, and improve staff performance based on timesheet reports.
- Reporting capabilities provide project news and updates that you can use to improve communication with C-level executives. All reports are easy to access, customize and export, which will also improve efficiency, operational costs, ticket management and customer service.
Why All This Matters
The ability to easily show company executives what IT is doing and how well you’re doing it may have them thinking twice about your role within the organization. Communicating tangible, business-focused information to company leaders can be an influential factor in gaining increased budgets and organization-wide support for projects.
In the long run, sharing positive numbers to the C-level can help you get new members on your team, promote existing employees, and even help you move up the ladder yourself.
How do you track and report success to company executives? Do you find this type of communication to be an issue at your workplace?
