Jan 2009

‘Reality is nothing, perception is everything!’

 As an IT department you’re delivering to your Service Level Agreement, you have reduced your headcount and you have driven costs down whilst improving the resilience of the IT infrastructure. A recent benchmark of IT performance showed you are well within industry norms. Regular helpdesk feedback indicates that perception of how you deal with calls is running well above satisfactory. You believe the applications suite is aligned with business requirements and supports the business processes of your company. What more do you have to do?

All of the above is excellent but ultimately futile if the Board and key senior management’s perception of IT is poor, or perhaps, more importantly, out of line with your own perception.

So how do you find out what senior management perception is of IT?

Well it’s simple, you ask them or more precisely you get an independent company to ask them for you.

An independent survey is far more likely to extract the open honest critical feedback which an internal IT department led survey is unable to deliver. This is because feedback on another department is always tempered by the need to work together and hence internal feedback isn’t always open. People have no such qualms about telling an independent company exactly what they think with the option to remain anonymous. You may not like the results and you may think the results are unfair but they will reflect perception.

Another benefit of using an external company to carry out the survey is that they are able to benchmark the results against their own anonymous survey data so that you can see how you compare with other IT departments. So, not only do you get a true perception of what your customers think, but also how you compare with your peers.

No matter what the results, good or bad you have a clear starting point for improving senior management perception of the service you deliver. You are able to compare with other IT departments and develop a plan to close the gaps where perception needs to improve. You now have an agenda to bring you closer to what senior management is looking for. That is the key to adding real value to your business.