What does a modern IT manager look like?

Because IT is at the heart of almost every business activity, they have a new opportunity to be pro-active rather than reactive.

Gone are the days where an IT manager’s job was just ‘to keep the lights on’. Modern IT managers are a new breed, with a new job description. Their duties?

– Maintain strong communication within their IT team and with other departments
– Use their IT and business expertise to generate ideas and guide business decisions
– Keep security strong, and the business’s and customers’ data safe
– Keep the business running smoothly and uninterrupted
– Direct IT spending to produce real business results
– Help employees to work efficiently and maximise productivity
– Enable new ways of working, including mobile and flexible work patterns
– Help the business to deliver better products and services to the customers
– Accelerate business growth

In short, it’s about starting with the business, finding the best people for the job, then working out the processes and only then making sure the right technology is in place.

How can you keep up?

With so many responsibilities, the new IT manager’s job can begin to look unfulfillable. But, it’s all made possible by keeping on top of the latest technology developments.

And that doesn’t mean just following ‘The Verge’ on Twitter.

It means accurately assessing which technologies will deliver real business benefits, and getting the right help to make sure you deploy them effectively.

It also means not getting left behind, because technology matures quickly. Think about the cloud. Until quite recently it was viewed with skepticism by most IT leaders. Now it has become mainstream. Indeed it is a leading innovation platform for businesses looking to create a competitive advantage.

The modern IT manager doesn’t just match IT to the business’s current needs. She is planning ahead and creating the next ‘new normal’.

IT managers are the ones who need to transform this talk into business benefits.

Your business’s guiding light

Modern IT managers are also gifted with direct influence over a wide range of business activities, from finance to marketing and from customer service to risk management. Because IT is at the heart of almost every business activity, they have a new opportunity to be pro-active rather than reactive.

This puts a special responsibility on their shoulders. They should be their business’s guiding light, leading them through the adoption of the cloud, the rise of big data, the fruition of the internet of things and beyond.

There’s a lot of talk about what technology businesses will be using by 2020. But, IT managers are the ones who need to transform this talk into business benefits. As BVEX point out:

‘we are already perceiving the IT environment of 2020 and can reach out and touch some of it already — how the CIO positions himself or herself now in order to brace for the shockwave already rumbling will determine who survives and who falters.’