IT for Flexibility

Greg Thomas, a former colleague from Microsoft now with Cisco, has just launched his new blog with some data from a research project Cisco have conducted with UK government organisations.

Looking at adoption of cloud computing, the research found that cloud was part of the IT strategy for 50 per cent of government organisations in the UK with majority believing that budget pressures and cuts will drive cloud adoption.

76 per cent were looking for benefits in collaboration / communication and 62 per cent for reduced costs.  A couple of weeks ago I was at a conference in London run by flexibility.co.uk and I was struck that two thirds of the attendees came from public sector organisations; all at various stages of implementing some form of flexible working.

IT is a critical enabler of flexible working, allowing people to work efficiently and securely wherever is most effective, for them, for the task in hand.  Effective management and communication (beyond the IT tools) are often greater challenges to overcome than IT but if everything is properly aligned then the potential savings are significant.  Organisations regularly report savings on real estate costs of 30 per cent or more when they enable employees to work flexibly. 

From an IT perspective, the challenge – or maybe the opportunity – is for IT to lead organisational transformation and not just look for savings within their own department.