Articulating the business value of IT.

With the plethora of messaging hitting functional process leads from outside the organization, internal providers of IT must develop a strategy to articulate their benefits to their organization. Many of the principles and ideas used in marketing and advertising are adaptable to build a enterprise brand for IT.

Brand development takes into consideration 3 key factors, differentiation, relevancy and consistency. Differentiation allows you to separate, distinguish and defend your services against messaging that is coming into your organization from outside service providers. Relevancy keeps you attuned to what users want and need and at the same time keeps you aware of market trends, and Consistency will give your constituents the guarantee or service level that your offering is competitive, at the very least, superior ideally, in addressing and aligning to their business goals. Today your brand is established by past encounters and service features that have already been delivered. In most cases, some re-branding work needs to be accomplished and should be re-evaluated continually. This is not a bookshelf exercise and should be a living and breathing document that should be evaluated in real time.

The first step in building your brand is an identification of key stakeholders with the intent of getting the understanding of their perception on how they think IT as a service is delivered. Do they see IT as a strategic partner who continually creates new benefits or a roadblock that continues down the same old way without alignment to business strategy? Branding of IT must be aligned to the corporate strategy and corporate goals. It must also reach down into the SG&A functionality and be tied to the activity level if individual contributors with in each department. Every person in every department must have an understanding of how IT adds value to their daily activity. An IT brand will build strength over time, consciously or unconsciously your constituents are branding you. A formal branding approach will put IT in the drivers seat.