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August - 2013 - issue > CIO Insights
Industry is Challenged to Align IT Demand With IT Strategy
Kelly MacPherson
CIO-Burger King Worldwide
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Burger King (NYSE: BKW) is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in Miami, Dade County. The company has a market cap of $6.71 billion.

In the past few years, consumer interaction with a brand via their own mobile device has evolved at exponential rates. Today, the consumerization of technology involves mobile and BYOD. Consumer interaction with a brand now includes mobile ordering, mobile payments, mobile coupons and more.

Also trending is the “Any Any Any Model” where access to information and systems occurs in any place, anytime and anywhere. With efficiency and scale, enabling enterprise-wide insights, “Big Data” is also front and center. These pave the way for high-value marketing and operational decisions and forecast business-impacting events. By the same token, “SaaS” and “Cloud Technology” have improved accessibility, flexibility, reduced capital costs and are conveniently growing with the pace of business.

Business applications have however not kept up with the rich and interactive capabilities of consumer technology, which include multi-gesture, ease of use, intuitive controls and mobile and anywhere capabilities.

Keeping up with Changing Times

Today, our industry is challenged with keeping up with IT demand and continuing to align IT strategy to the point where it keeps up, or outpaces the business strategy. To be successful, it remains imperative to ensure constant integration of IT and business, to keep business focused on IT initiatives that contribute most to the success of the business and to continue implementing tool sets that allow businesses to help themselves.

With today’s “App” generation, it is important to align expectations and demands between consumer technology and corporate technology. Because consumer technology is outpacing enterprise technology through flexibility and intuitiveness, audiences have high expectations for simplicity.

It is easy for everyone to focus on what is new and trendy, so highly entrenched legacy platforms need to be addressed with a keen eye on the core and base technologies. Simultaneously, a clear plan that includes a strong disciple for sunsetting old technologies is required.

Furthermore, as organizations become more efficient through the use of technology, IT organizations often end up absorbing additional work – doing more with less. Skilled and experienced IT resources are also high in demand.

Striking a Balance between Shiny and Practical Ideas

Innovation can be achieved by leveraging the team, vendors and competitive data. It is also critical for an organization to strike an innovative balance between the cool & shiny and the practical. The team could use ideation sessions, divergent thinking methods and creative whiteboarding and visualization to solve problems and develop novel strategies to approach problems.


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