In today’s digital age, technology is no longer playing a supporting role—it has become the driving engine for business transformation and growth. The modern IT organization has evolved beyond providing tools and features; it now stands as the strategic force that empowers business units to reach their ambitious goals.  

However, to truly harness the power of IT, it must be positioned as a proactive advisor and partner in business strategy, not just as a service provider. IT departments must take on the role of “business coaches.” They must guide and advise technical capabilities while explaining the technical impact on business outcomes. In fact, they must demonstrate how to maximize business value with technological features and functions. Within this collaborative model, both IT and Business must continuously seek opportunities to automate business processes, consolidate data, eliminate manual process steps, and optimize operations. IT can become the indispensable advisor for ERP data and AI scenarios by working together.

IT in the Driver Seat: Guiding Business Strategy

In the past, organizations viewed IT merely as a support function—a necessary but secondary department responsible for keeping systems running and fixing technical issues. This limited perspective no longer serves modern businesses. Today’s IT function has emerged from the back office to take its place as a strategic force, driving innovation and leading critical business decisions.

While many organizations aspire to position IT as a driving force for business transformation, the reality falls short of this vision. The journey begins with IT leadership. Today’s IT leaders must evolve beyond technical expertise to become strategic business partners—professionals who deeply understand business operations and strategy. This transformation requires close collaboration with business executives to comprehend organizational goals, navigate challenges, and identify opportunities. The scope extends far beyond implementing new technologies or managing system upgrades; successful IT leadership demands a fundamental understanding of business operations and the ability to align technical initiatives with strategic objectives.

The Engine of Business Transformation

In its most evolved state, IT becomes the catalyst for business innovation, enabling data-driven digital business models. Through advanced analytics, IT empowers organizations to extract valuable insights about customer behavior, market trends, and operational performance. This capability extends to developing innovative digital products and services, creating new revenue streams while deepening customer engagement. Furthermore, IT drives operational excellence through automation and process optimization, simultaneously reducing costs and enhancing productivity—all while ensuring flawless execution of daily operations.

Coaching and Advising: IT’s Role as a Business Partner

Understanding Business Needs and Extracting Value

To serve as an effective strategic advisor, IT must develop a comprehensive understanding of the business it supports. This goes beyond mastering technical requirements—it demands deep insight into organizational goals, challenges, and growth opportunities.

With this business understanding as a foundation, IT can better evaluate and demonstrate the value of technological solutions across the enterprise. This enables IT to create a strategic vision that seamlessly integrates existing systems with emerging technologies, maximizing operational impact.

Consider two common business objectives: When organizations seek to enhance customer engagement, IT can architect comprehensive solutions combining CRM systems, data analytics, and AI to deliver personalized customer experiences. Similarly, for businesses focusing on operational efficiency, IT can implement targeted solutions using automation tools, process optimization software, and ERP systems to streamline workflows and optimize inventory management.

IT as a Coach: Guiding Technological Adoption

Beyond technical implementation, IT must serve as an organizational coach, driving technology adoption across the enterprise. This coaching role involves helping users master new systems while clearly demonstrating the tangible value these technologies bring to their daily work.

Change resistance remains one of the most significant barriers to technological transformation. Employees often hesitate to embrace new technologies, fearing disruption to their established workflows or feeling overwhelmed by unfamiliar systems. IT can overcome this resistance through a comprehensive approach that combines:

• Targeted training programs
• Ongoing technical support
• Clear communication of benefits
• Practical demonstrations of workflow improvements
• Regular feedback sessions

Moreover, IT plays a crucial role in cultivating an innovation-driven culture throughout the organization. By creating safe spaces for experimentation, facilitating collaborative projects, and encouraging idea-sharing across departments, IT helps build an environment where innovation becomes part of the organizational DNA.

Building a Strong IT-Business Relationship

Success in IT’s advisory role hinges on building strong relationships with business stakeholders through sustained collaboration, transparent communication, and mutual trust. By positioning itself as a strategic partner rather than a service provider, IT can better align its initiatives with core business objectives.

Transparency serves as the cornerstone of effective IT-business partnerships. This means:

• Being candid about technological capabilities
• Articulating the constraints of proposed solutions
• Setting expectations about deliverables
• Maintaining open dialogue about challenges
• Providing regular updates on project progress

Through intensive collaboration between IT and business leaders, organizations can more effectively identify opportunities, develop solutions, and implement transformative changes. This partnership naturally dismantles organizational silos and fosters a culture of cross-functional collaboration, ultimately strengthening the entire enterprise.

Opportunities for the Business

Integrating Business Processes for Seamless Operations

Integrating processes is one of the most significant opportunities for IT to provide enterprise value to business units. In many companies, there is intense competition between different departments and functions. They operate in silos – sometimes kingdoms – with little communication or data sharing between them. Integrating and harmonizing business processes enterprise-wide will go a long way.

By integrating processes across the business units, IT can help break down these silos. This can be enforced by using one technology for one function – instead, allowing different departments to do their own thing. Integrating SCM with warehouse management systems ensures that the organization has real-time visibility into enterprise-wide inventory levels and can respond quickly to changes in demand.

Consolidating Data for a Single Source of Truth

In many organizations, critical business data remains fragmented across disparate systems, databases, and data lakes. This fragmentation obscures the true state of business operations and severely impacts decision-making quality. Despite advances in data technology, many organizations still rely heavily on spreadsheets for crucial business decisions—a practice that introduces significant risks. Even well maintained spreadsheets are susceptible to calculation errors, data inconsistencies, and version control issues, potentially leading to flawed business decisions based on unreliable information.

IT must get in the driver seat to address data consolidation into a single source of truth. Of course, the humongous task of integrating data from all over the enterprise involves leaders from many departments. Walk the talk – and IT can be in a position to take on accountability for data. It must be stored in a central repository, easily accessible to all business units. The single source of truth approach will ensure business leaders have accurate and up-to-date information to make critical decisions.

In the absence of a “data owner,” IT can get into the lead in designing the consolidation of customer data from different systems and sources to a single data warehouse or data lake. Such a central data repository would provide an enterprise-wide view of each customer’s interactions with the company.

Many companies I worked with in the past operated without a clear data ownership structure—a critical gap that IT departments are uniquely positioned to address. By assuming this strategic role, IT can establish data governance frameworks while ensuring data quality, security, and accessibility across the enterprise.

Eliminating Manual Processes and Steps

Manual processes and steps are inefficient and delay outcomes. Imagine a colleague gets sick a day before the deadline, and you must finish their deliverables. Manual steps, in the data world or within manufacturing, are time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale. IT – in collaboration with the respective business unit – can help eliminate these manual processes by automating tasks and workflows, reducing the need for manual intervention, and freeing up employees to focus on higher-value work.

Automation can be applied to a wide range of processes, from routine administrative tasks to complex decision-making. For example, IT can automate data entry with bots[1] to reduce human errors and speed up the process. With automated approval workflows, tasks are completed faster – and consistently.

IT as an Advisor for ERP Data and AI

Maximizing the Value of ERP Data

ERP systems are the backbone of many companies, particularly manufacturing, and provide a comprehensive view of the organization’s operations. However, its true value lies in the data it generates and provides. Using the ERP database, it becomes easy to identify trends, patterns, and opportunities. Data analytics tools are required to gain insights into customer behavior, supply chain efficiency, or financial performance. ERP data can also be used to develop predictive models for better forecast accuracy.

Leveraging AI for Business Innovation

AI offers tremendous potential for enhancing business operations, from predictive analytics to customer service automation. However, organizations must first understand their data landscape to fully leverage AI and establish a clear strategy.

AI sits front and center during any software vendor presentation. However, it gets fuzzy when enterprise value comes into the equation. It is a significant investment in internal or external resources to set up a company-specific AI environment. However, the vendors can’t answer (yet) for many business scenarios how AI makes processes faster, makes decisions more impactful, and makes business planning more reliable. It’s still to be proven that AI delivers tangible enterprise value.

Of course, decision-making must be data-driven. By developing a robust data strategy that prioritizes data quality and accessibility, IT can help organizations harness the power of AI to improve decision-making and ignite innovation. AI initiatives should use fast prototyping to involve the business users as early as possible.

Also, early on the AI journey, IT must provide guidance on ethical AI practices, ensuring the technology is used responsibly and transparently.

Fostering a Culture of Change

For IT to truly support and empower businesses, it must foster a culture of change within the organization. This involves constant experimentation, embracing new ways of work, and collaborating with business units in agile and short projects.

Encouraging a Growth Mindset

IT must always look for growth because the IT systems must stay ahead of the performance needs and expectations. So, it should be easy for IT to champion and promote its growth mindset. Colleagues should feel empowered to explore new ideas and take calculated risks and decisions. IT-led initiatives like hackathons, innovation challenges, and Design Thinking sessions help to build the growth mindset. IT must inspire creativity throughout the organization by creating a safe space for experimentation, for example, by offering and supporting prototype initiatives.

Recognizing and Rewarding Innovation

To further reinforce the culture of change, organizations should recognize and reward employees who contribute innovative ideas and solutions and represent role models for early adopters. IT can shine in establishing recognition programs, highlighting successful initiatives, and encouraging others to think outside the box.

Staying Ahead of Technological Trends

IT must stay informed about emerging trends and innovations in our rapidly evolving technological landscape. When preaching “change” to the organization, they must act as role models (“Walk the Talk”) for continuous learning, attend industry conferences, and participate in professional development opportunities.

IT should not keep newly acquired knowledge to itself. By sharing insights into technological advancements with other departments or providing weekly or monthly newsletters, IT can spark new ideas and encourage the exploration of innovative technologies.

Conclusion

The IT leaders must emerge as vital partners in driving business success far beyond just a technical focus. By understanding business needs, coaching technical capabilities, integrating processes, consolidating data, and automating manual tasks, IT can empower organizations to bridge business needs with technologies. As the advisor for ERP and AI, IT has the opportunity to shape the future of business and foster a culture of change.

The potential is evident in sight. IT only must embrace a proactive, strategic mindset, positioning itself as a trusted advisor and a key driver of organizational transformation. In doing so, IT can help companies navigate our digital age’s technical complexities and prepare the business units for new growth opportunities.

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[1] Bots often imitate or replace a human user’s behavior. Used for repetitive tasks, they can do them much faster and more reliably than human users could.