IT and business unit friction can adversely affect CM projects

In the past couple of weeks, I've come across two surveys that suggest while companies need content management and eDiscovery, they can't get out of their own way to implement it. I'm being flip of course, but the fact is both these surveys found that tension between IT and business units gets in the way of project success. This isn't exactly big news. Anyone who has worked in an enterprise setting knows that you need IT's blessing to get most projects approved and there are good reasons for this, but until IT and the business units can find a way past their differences, projects will continue to flounder and the company's bottom line could suffer.

Web content management and the competitive edge

Just last week, I wrote in Forrester report predicts web content management will grow in spite of economy [1] that companies recognize that they need to expand web content management even in today's economic climate to remain competitive, but IT and the units who use the web CMS, mostly marketing in this case, can't get together to decide on how to get that done. In this piece, one key point stuck out:

"Powers writes in the executive summary: 'Dissatisfaction with current WCM initiatives remains, largely driven by lack of IT and business alignment, unrealistically high expectations, and corporate politics.'"

There it is in a nut shell, lack of IT and business alignment and politics, but these two groups are far from alone in this regard.

It's the same story with eDiscovery

Recommind [2] recently did a survey with 250 large enterprise companies and their results are eerily similar to the ones from Forrester. There's a need, but the legal department and IT are not communicating and projects are suffering. Craig Carpenter (whom we interviewed recently in this One on one [3]), Recommind's Vice President of Marketing and General Counsel says the survey found that the relationship between legal and IT has improved over the last 5 years, but it's still not great and he says, "it needs to improve a lot more very quickly." Carpenter says, the two departments need to work together because legal owns responsibility for things like eDiscovery, records management and retention, but IT takes the lead in the vast majority of projects. "You have a bit of disconnect there because you have two groups who are not necessarily playing nicely in the sand box and one group owns responsibility and the other group is actually rolling out the product that will help the first group meet their responsibilities," Carpenter says.

Carpenter adds when he goes on sales call that it's imperative to get the two parties in the same room. "If we don't have IT and legal in the same room, we know we have problem," he says.

Why can't they just get along

I'm not here to judge whether IT doesn't understand business needs or the business units don't understand the requirements IT has as the arbiter of all technology purchases. It's the way the situation has played out for as long as anyone can remember, but someone has to act as the mediator between these two groups. I think it's going to fall on the vendor quite honestly to find a way to align the visions of the two groups. I'm sure any vendor worth its salt has been fighting the good fight on that front since the beginning of time (or at least technology time), but obviously nobody's doing a very good job at this.

The survey results paint a clear picture. There is clearly a need for these projects, but internal political obstacle are getting in the way of business getting done. Perhaps in large projects of this sort a systems integrator, or consulting firm, or even a firm and clear-minded internal project manager can guide the project through to completion. But somebody needs to step up and get these parties together or we will continue to see content management and related projects flounder waiting for some clear leadership to get it done.

Let me hear from you: How has your company overcome IT-business unit friction to complete a project? Leave a comment and let me know. - Ron [4]