Digi-Key Headquarters | Thief River Falls, MN
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY
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Are there any factors that helped make the communication between the two groups successful? Agile teams with frequent communication at many levels; including open town hall meetings between the team. What advice would you share with companies who struggle in getting the business and IT to properly communicate? The old adage: walk a mile in my shoes. Move high- potential IT leaders to serve in business roles for specific assignments and conversely, have business folks assume product leader roles on the agile teams. Ask the teams to tackle situations together and jointly report back recommendations, with associated risks and alternatives.
Across your career, how have you seen the relationship between business & technology progress? To me it’s really two-fold. Technology is most powerful when it’s solving a business need or opportunity. Sometimes it’s the business need that spawns a new technology and sometimes it’s a technology that spawns new business opportunities. Regardless of which comes first, the environment is created by listening to customers. Strong analytics allow that listening to happen, even if it’s in absence of traditional direct to customer contact. You can’t be afraid to reinvent what you do. Holding a competitive advantage in a process or model that is not where your customers are headed is useless. How would you describe the relationship between the business and IT at Digi-Key? As a digital company, IT is as key an element of our business as any other functional area. We migrated to an agile methodology a number of years ago which has driven an even tighter coupling between IT and our Sales, Marketing, and Operations areas.
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Navigating Through Change | 13
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