[Two-Minute Read] The End of the Goal Line Stand: Office 365 and the Case for IT Liaisons

Let's face it, most company departments don't always see IT as a creative, value-adding business partner. It's a shame too - because behind the scenes, that's usually what IT is. However, when we get involved with departments late in the solution ideation process, we're more likely to be seen as an adversary rather than partner - often having to pump the brakes on implementations that need more time and oversight, or even stop plans that may have negative technical implications the department was unable to see.

So how do we fix this? Liaising! Yes, I'm a big advocate of IT departments establishing a defined liaising process, assigning roles and responsibilities to execute this important mission. It's often not even necessary to hire staff to fill these roles - assign existing IT resources to act as liaison between IT and a small set of departments (or even just one). Have the departments each assign a resource to act as their primary point of contact to IT, and make sure the IT liaison and department liaison meet at least monthly to review coming IT needs, projects, pain points, and training or support options. Through this process, IT gains the opportunity to discover technology needs before they become 'shadow IT' fodder, while building communicative relationships throughout the organization. Switch IT resource departmental assignments annually, and over time, your IT staff also gains a much deeper understanding of the inner workings of the business (while growing professionally too).

Ok, but what does Office 365 have to do with any of this? Office 365 impacts virtually every user, and at least every department, in a typical company. Email, identity and group membership, intranet, file storage, chat, directory information, search - all are important parts of a typical employee's day. If you're in the process of rolling out Office 365 to your organization, you've already got a need to be communicating with each department, ideally helping them determine how to gain the most value from this new set of tools. This makes for the perfect time to adjust IT process to incorporate a liaising strategy. You'll not only make your Office 365 implementation more successful, you'll create a framework to make other technology investments in general more valuable going forward.

O365's broad reach gives you a chance to modernize not only your digital workplace platform, but your overall IT-to-organization connection strategy at the same time. Do this right, and you'll go from being the unlucky defender hoping to stop the charging running back at the goal line, to the member of the huddle in on the play in the first place - much more fun (and sure, everybody winds up liking you more too)!