Delivering iPod equivalents

As Guido Sacchi sees it, there has to be a better way for IT organizations to truly understand the requirements of business managers and end users and translate those into effective solutions. Because the way most IT organizations have traditionally gone about it just doesn't work, he says.

When it comes to IT meeting end users' expectations, says Sacchi, "We fail."

So Sacchi, the CIO at CompuCredit who spoke on Monday at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference in Orlando, challenged his peers to develop "iPod equivalents" or Web sites and systems that are so easy and elegant to use that a set of instructions or an explanation for their purpose shouldn't be necessary.

One way that Sacchi has tried to tackle the problem at CompuCredit is by launching an online marketplace his IT team created called ‘The Collaboratory'. The idea for the site came about after Sacchi began imploring CompuCredit's business executives to feed him new ideas for improving the company's business processes or other ways to save it money.

The Web site is divided into three sections. These include a ‘Question marketplace' where IT and business staffers alike can pose questions intended for people in the IT organization to respond to. There are also corresponding ‘Idea' and ‘Product' marketplaces which serve similar purposes.

The Collaboratory has spurred a couple of recent IT/business projects at CompuCredit. Business people recently used the site to ask how the company could introduce secure videoconferencing. IT and business managers batted around some ideas, came up with a solution and launched a secured videoconferencing system a few weeks ago, says Sacchi.

It's a good example of how IT leaders need to come up with more innovative ways to tackle the age-old business alignment conundrum. And it doesn't hurt to borrow from the simplicity and stylishness of the iPod.