What setbacks are BT leaders facing as their responsibilities grow?
To get some answers, we decided to survey 100+ business technology leaders and hundreds of professionals across lines of business (LOB) as part of our State of Business Technology Report.
While there are many takeaways from the study, there are 2 key insights: BT teams are struggling to carry out their work and maintain positive relationships with stakeholders across lines of business.
Read on to learn more about these challenges and to discover how your BT team can overcome each!
1. Gain Trust and Appreciation
The relationship between business technology teams and their LOB colleagues have a lot of room for improvement.
How do we know? We asked BT leaders how appreciated they feel by their LOB colleagues and the results weren’t particularly rosy:
BT leaders also report significant levels of mistrust across lines of business:
One way to improve both of these areas is by finding a strong advocate for BT at the C-level. This influential colleague can help articulate the value your team delivers—which should help colleagues across LOB better understand and appreciate your team. Your C-level advocate can also clarify that the BT team is meant to act as an independent third party within the organization. Hearing this from someone outside of BT can make all the difference in building trust between your team and lines of business.
Related: Why BT and lines of business aren’t aligned
2. Reassess Your Integration and Automation Tools
Many BT teams are struggling to keep up with the automation demands of their colleagues:
BT leaders also cite a variety of frustrations, most commonly the speed at which they’re able to deliver to their LOB (cited by 62% of BT leaders).
Though BT leaders may be experiencing these issues and frustrations for a number of reasons, the technology they’re using for building integrations and automations is likely a leading source.
To empower your BT team to deliver for LOB, evaluate whether your colleagues across lines of business can build integrations and automations using your current tools. If they can’t, the tools may be worth re-assessing—as they’re likely causing major bottlenecks.
You can take your assessment a step further by determining how much training your current tools require and how compatible they are with your organization’s apps. It might also be worth considering whether the tools can be used long-term as your company grows and what the costs are for continuing to use them—versus upgrading to a single, low-to-no-code integration and automation platform.
3. Properly Invest in Your Team
BT leaders are struggling to tackle their work effectively due to a lack of proper investment from their employer. For example, when we asked BT leaders about their top challenges to getting things done, nearly 2 in 5 (38%) cited a lack of specialized resources, while 44% said that it’s due to the tools at their disposal.
To identify the areas that your BT team needs investment in, make a point of collecting team members’ feedback via surveys, during meetings, among other ways, consistently. You’ll quickly learn how your existing systems are falling short, which ones you need to acquire, etc. If you can follow through on their feedback, you’ll not only improve your team’s performance, but also raise each team member’s level of engagement—as it shows that you value their input.
Looking for more tips? Get the insights and best practices you need by joining Systematic, the largest community for business systems professionals.
