In business, an operating unit is either making money or it’s detracting from a company’s profits. In simple terms, it’s the difference between a profit center and a cost center.

IT Departments worldwide face the difficult task of demonstrating the ROI that they provide to their parent companies.

IT Departments provide essential support services to other departments within a company, however; these contributions are often not easily quantified into revenue.

Most IT departments traditionally function as cost centers, a business model in which funds are invested but an obvious return on investment is not easily visible.

There’s an increasing need to transform IT Departments into a revenue contributing business. The impact of IT on business is deep, pervasive, and growing.

We literally can’t separate IT and general business. The better any company exploits technology, the better they are at their jobs, knowing customers, working with partners, capturing markets, growing profits.

IT is being called on to transform business, and to do so IT must transform itself, too.

As the developing markets e.g. Nigeria matures, executives becomes wiser and sees the need to focus more on their core business.

And these we have seen with decreasing IT budgets, or outright outsourcing of all IT function. We can broadly say that enterprise in Africa are at a cross-road and are facing typical business challenges – which are changing the way IT function is organized.

Then Role of CIO is also changing – with the change in the IT requirements and model of IT engagements.  IT is getting more and more aligned to business functions – and is seen as a critical enabler for conducting operations.

Traditionally enterprises in the Africa have taken a CAPEX centric approach, – however they now starting to realize the need for and benefits of – OPEX based models.

What this means is that organizations are looking at means to improve ways in which business is conducted.

This may be true for all functions within an organization like Supply Chain, sales and marketing etc.

In the current context of business transformation, including IT departments, CIOs need to innovate in order to stay relevant. Based on survey amongst CIO in the West Africa region, the top priorities for CIOs and IT Managers are getting executive buy-in and support for strategic/innovative IT projects; obtaining budgets for IT investments and managing growing expectations and service needs. I strongly believe CIOs can take advantage of these challenges to re-invent themselves and be seen differently by the business. CIOs need to more from IT productivity to business productivity.

IDC had in different forum highlight the advent of disruptive technology with the 3rd Platform: Cloud, Mobility, Big Data & Analytics and Social technologies had impacted the way IT is consumed. This in itself provides both opportunity and a threat to CIOs and their IT Departments.

An opportunity, if the CIO takes advantage of these to reinvent his IT department by showing value beyond that been seen as a cost center to becoming a profit center.

And the 3rd platform could be a threat if The CIO does nothing other than “keeping lights on” and just maintaining IT systems. Some CIOs can hardly leverage IT to unlock real value and profit, and as a result, most businesses treat IT as a cost center, because that is what it is to them. CIOs need to take advantage of exploits in technology, knowing the business, knowing the business’ customers, working with partners and to growing profits, thereby maintaining their relevance to the organisation.

Already a new class of strategic IT organization is emerging, one that uses the business of the 3rd Platform in cloud, mobile, mixed-sourcing, strategic souring, and e-commerce as core components by delivering business services even better and cheaper than some IT departments.

How Can CIOs transform their IT Departments from a Cost Center to a Profit Center?
The process of transforming a cost center to a profit center is not a simple one, but it’s very achievable.

The first step in transitioning to a profit center is performing a gap analysis. IT leaders should take stock of what they really need to transit, that is, judge what the current position is and decide on the eventual goal of the department.

IT leaders must be certain to ensure that they identify and assess all barriers to transforming the IT department as well as discover what variety of the profit center model is most suitable to the company. Questions that could be asked during the gap analysis are the following:
•    Is there a market or how can I create a market for the IT department to sell identified services to external companies?
•    Do I have resources or partnerships to evolve the transition? 
•    Do O I have a sellable transition business plan to the business?

Take a stock of your IT investments in Licenses or infrastructure, there is a service you probably can compartmentalize and extend to provide and sell to small businesses?

CIOs and IT Managers may also consider a “Charge Back” model to internal sister departments within the corporate depending on the size and structure of the parent company.

A charge back method would strive to frame and describe the means in which an IT department’s sister departments can compensate IT for “extra” or “additional” or “add-on” services delivered e.g. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) implementation for enterprise mobility.

Creating a charge back method requires participation from all of IT’s internal business partners. Developing a compensation or charge back has the potential to be politically explosive within a corporate, but the benefit to IT is that it can help dispel the notion that it is a cost center by enabling IT to prove that it can generate obvious revenue or at lease save significant cost by regulating technology consumption.

By charging internal business partners for IT services, IT would be able to clearly show the benefits their services provide. For bigger corporation where departments are responsible for their own IT budgets, IT departments need to determine competitive differentiation in delivering its services. Competitive differentiation in this context means that IT should realize that they are not guaranteed to win all contracts put up for bid by internal departments.

IT departments must ensure that they are competitive with their outside competition and must display this competitive advantage by completing projects in an efficient and timely manner.

It is important to know that transforming IT departments from cost center to profit center is a new paradigm that is essential because of the way technology usage is changing. While it may not be popular now does not mean it’s not worth considering.

One phenomenon that we already see putting threat on the job and relevance of CIOs and IT Departments is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). It’s gradually permeating the IT space as well. Locally, we’ve seen where a whole IT department is outsourced.

You may argue that that is on bigger scale and only big companies can possibly do that. The truth is that when Cloud Computing is at its best, and regulations permit, small and mid-size companies may decide access ERP, CRM services from the cloud on a subscription basis and move from CAPEX to OPEX model as far IT is concerned.

Ten years ago, CIOUpdate.com columnist Sourabh Hajela states that “IT cannot work as a profit center because it fails to meet the requirements for a department to function as a profit center because of the following reasons:
•    Revenues and costs: Accurately quantifying revenues and costs.
•    Market: A focus on customer relationships that are generating higher profits and either discontinue or deemphasize those that aren’t.
•    Product Mix: The creation of a portfolio of products and services driven by market demand.
•    Product pricing: Price products and services to maximize profits.
•    Timing: It is often said that, in business, timing is everything. Profit centers are profitable when they can quickly respond to a market opportunity.”

Mr. Hajela general surmises that IT departments cannot work as profit centers because of its close alignment with other business departments. “An ITO cannot work as a profit center because it has a captive relationship with its “customers,” 

I am sure this suggestion by Mr. Hajela has been over shadowed by the advent of the disruptive technology in the 3rd Platform and the emergence of new models and options for businesses to consume.

In a short while, there will be an increasing pressure to transform IT Departments into a business, a revenue generating entity. CIOs should be prepared to answer the question, what kind of transformation makes the most sense for my business?

I’ll close this article with a quote from Charles Darwin that “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Bola Adisa
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 07061547518