It’s been a while since we last spoke about the “consumerisation” of IT and recently I’ve seen a couple of warning signs that some organisations have missed the point of the extent of the philosophical change that consumerisation requires in order to be a strategic asset in how you empower individuals with technology.
Many organisations clearly understand the potential of consumerisation inside their organisation, they get that it creates more engagement with their employees, especially around their use of technology. They get that it fosters innovation as people feel empowered to use technology creatively to help them solve business challenges and deliver better service. Hell, they even get that, done correctly, it can save money on top of all that. But increasingly I’m seeing examples of organisations that try to jump to the answer without considering or implementing the principles that will make this approach successful year after year. Net result, short term gain, long term pain – worse still, that long term pain will fool people to think that consumerisation “failed” and we’ll be back where we started – expensive, constrained corporate desktops that provide a far worse experience than the one we enjoy in our personal lives.
The two warning signs of this short-termist approach are easily identified, basically, ask yourselves, or your IT department (and be honest) – Are you chasing consumerisation based on a philosophical change in the way you think about the role of technology inside your organisation, or
1. is it the result of the demand for a specific device? or
2. you think “consumer” equipment is cheaper? (you know the line – “you paid how much for that corporate laptop? Man, they’re half that price in PC World/on the interwebs” and so on)
Come on, I said be honest. Many I know are doing it to make it acceptable to use a specific device work on the corporate network – I even heard the phrase the “ipadisation” the other day (you know who you are Mr Weber). This my friends, is _not_ consumerisation, it is satiating the ego of you or your execs and if all you do is focus on one specific device, you’ll have to do it all again when that fickle consumer changes his or her mind and decides that this year, it’s the pink one we all like.
Others are looking at the price point difference between a shiny, consumer laptop and the ugly, expensive corporate alternative and thinking “What the hell? The spec is the same so why pay more”. Well, remember that TCO acronym that we all spent blood, sweat and tears getting established all those years ago? It’s got the words “total cost” in it for a reason.
Many consumer devices are trinkets, they’re pretty, they work well for a time, but they won’t stand the day in, day out abuse that business machines get. They may last a year or maybe two of that kind of toil, but ultimately you’ll end up spending more money keeping them running than you would have if you’d bought something more fit for purpose.
Please don’t mistake this post for an anti-iPad rant, it’s really not (and to be honest I’d hope you know me better than to think that). If anything, this post is just a little catharsis for me, it’s to remind us that consumerisation is a change in how we should think about _people_ within organisations, it is about culture, not finance, politics or god forbid, technology.
Stick with that and no matter what “must-have” tech gadget is in season, we’ll all do just fine.