A couple of weeks ago, in “Making an Informed Investment in Supply Chain Software,” I commented on a problem that many companies have experienced.  Here is what I wrote: I often come across the situation where the logistics operations team spends several months evaluating software vendors, including the incumbent ERP vendor, and they ultimately select a best-of-breed solution, but when they present their decision to the CIO (who was disconnected from the process), he responds by asking why the ERP vendor wasn’t selected.  This then triggers another round of evaluations, this time with corporate IT involved.

On Friday, I read an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review (“Dismantle Distrust Between IT and the Business“) that underscores, in broader terms, the disconnect that exists between IT and the users of enterprise business systems.  The article was written by Susan Cramm, the former CFO and executive vice president at Chevy’s Mexican Restaurants, and prior to that, the CIO and vice president of the Information Technology Group at Taco Bell Corporation.  Here are the opening words of her article:

“Interested in nurturing technology-enabled innovation?  Start by nurturing relationships.   IT often impedes, rather than enables, innovation. Yet it’s possible to break through the IT resource constraints and long governance lines by tapping in to the knowledge and motivation of business ‘lead users’ and skilling them up, allowing IT to say ‘go’ rather than ‘no’.  The ‘teach them to fish vs. fish for them’ approach sounds very logical – until faced with the reality that IT often doesn’t really believe their business counterparts can learn to fish.  It’s not surprising, then, that frontline business users often feel patronized by their potential IT teachers.”

Cramm references another great HBR article in her piece: “The High Priests of IT – And the Heretics” by Cory Doctorow.  Here is my favorite quote from his piece:

“The dirty secret of corporate IT is that its primary mission is to serve yesterday’s technology needs, even if that means strangling tomorrow’s technology solutions.  The myth of corporate IT is that it alone possesses the wisdom to decide which technologies will allow the workers on the front line to work better, faster and smarter – albeit with the occasional lackluster requirements-gathering process, if you’re lucky.”

I recommend that you read both articles to fully appreciate the arguments the authors present.  Based on what I hear from supply chain and logistics users, many of the points Cramm and Doctorow raise in their articles ring true for me.

For example, a key reason many companies have implemented a software-as-a-service (SaaS) transportation management or global trade management solution is because their logistics and trade compliance organizations couldn’t wait “two or three years for corporate IT to finish with its global ERP implementation before they could support us” with an internal implementation.  Also, in terms of IT “strangling tomorrow’s technology solutions,” I see this happening today with IT’s resistance (for valid and invalid reasons) to enabling greater use of social media technologies (see “Facebook in Supply Chain Management” and “Supply Chain Twitter“).

What are your thoughts on this topic?  Do you feel “patronized” by your IT organization?  Do you agree that IT serves “yesterday’s technology needs” at the expense of tomorrow’s technology solutions?  Do logistics folks in your organization eat lunch with the IT folks, and if so, what do they talk about?