It was great to attend my first face-to-face event recently on Accelerating Digital Business, but I found it somewhat troubling that all the people at my table came up with one common theme – Why is IT the last to find out that departments are buying digital products?

It’s nice to know that I am not alone in this situation; however, it’s still alarming that this challenge is out there. What are we doing wrong that people within our organizations are going out and buying services or software without first involving Procurement or IT?

Many of you during the pandemic probably had the opportunity to develop your culinary skills in the kitchen and produce some really good results that were truly appreciated by your family and friends.

You see a picture of something you like in a recipe book but, before you cook it, you must take some initial steps:

1. Will the rest of the family like the dish that you want to cook?
2. Do you have to consider anyone’s dietary requirements?
3. Looking in your cupboard and fridge – do you have all the ingredients to make the dish?
4. Do you have enough money to go and buy the missing ingredients?
5. Have you communicated any of this?

Taking the meal analogy and applying that in the workplace, these are the questions and actions our business partners should be taking:

1. Why is the software or services you are looking at important to the company, and what benefit will it bring?
2. Do you have all the facts about the software or services? Does your company already have something similar that can achieve the same outcomes for you?
3. Does the software or services need to be integrated with anything else to make it function correctly and provide the right output?
4. We all have to be accountable for spending the shareholders’ money appropriately – is the expense justifiable? (Would you take the money out of your own savings account?)
5. Who else needs to be involved in the process to be secure in the answers to the above questions?

Transformation is good and should be embraced. Having that initial awareness of the need for change is essential. Knowing who needs to participate and support the change is a must and, therefore, we need to ensure that our business partner alignment is right and clear.

Having the right knowledge in the room to ensure the path to change can be achieved. You can’t do this alone, so you need to know who your go-to person is. We want to help, we want to ensure you achieve the right results, but we also have a duty to make certain our actions are appropriate and worthy. Which is why we will always ask questions and work to achieve clarity of the end goals and outcomes. So please don’t look at these as blockers to your path of development, think of them as helping you make sound decisions for long-term goals.

However, all of this comes down to one thing – communication.

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