IT departments, and those who lead them, are more than ever aware that their role is a cog in a much larger machine.

This has not always been the case. The history of business technology is littered with apocryphal tales of inflexible, inwardly focused, even arrogant IT teams that became a major hindrance to the wider organisation through their insistence that IT knows best. It is likely that most of these have since been outsourced.

At its best, IT is an enabler and a driver for the business; at very least it is a vital support function. It sits between the needs of the wider company strategy and the resources of the IT industry, translating and reinterpreting one to the other.

But does your IT department’s structure reflect this role in the supply chain?

Best practice in IT organisation is fragmented and varies widely from company to company. There are highly centralised teams, perhaps with well-established traditional functions such as support, analysis, development and data centre. There are highly distributed teams, with a small central IT strategy function leading staff embedded in business teams. The skill sets needed depend entirely on the approach taken. It is easy to pick and choose from either extreme to find something that seems to suit any need.

But many of the experts featured in the latest issue of Computing Business point out that fundamental flaws still exist.

The growth of outsourcing and the increased dependence on suppliers has led to smaller IT departments, but they do not necessarily reflect the changed relationship with key vendors. According to Gartner, perhaps as little as three per cent of the IT budget goes on managing supplier relationships – even though as much as 60 per cent of that budget is spent with those suppliers.

How do you manage both innovation and cost control? How do you develop staff to have greater business knowledge when the primary function of their team is technical? And for chief information officers in particular, how do you establish the processes and management structures to lead your department, support your customers in the business and gain value from the suppliers upon whom you rely?

The provision of IT is increasingly focused on the provision of flexibility to the business, enabling and supporting change, and the IT organisation itself needs to reflect this.

The successful IT leaders will be those who can find the best way to manage such conflicting demands.

What do you think? Email us at feedback@computingbusiness.co.uk