Establish

IT Leadership
Move from reactive to proactive
 Reacting – a broken In a recent Forrester Research survey
model for IT of IT leaders at more than 3,700
“
Traditionally, business units looked to IT to implement
companies, respondents
estimated that they spend
72
the technology required to meet their business plans.
They prepared detailed specifications, and IT either
purchased or developed a solution to meet that need. an average 72% of the %
This approach led to complex, custom solutions that
money in their budgets on
were difficult to manage. Often the solutions were out keep-the-lights-on functions such as
of date soon after they were deployed. IT departments
ended up spending most of their time on updates and replacing or expanding capacity and
maintenance rather supporting ongoing operations
than innovation. and maintenance, while only
28 % 28% of the money goes
toward new projects.

Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 2

Coming up short

60%
of employees believe
Clearly, this
IT is ineffective at
approach
providing collaboration, wasn’t working.
data analysis, and
IT was often seen as an impediment as it
mobility capabilities. struggled to maintain current systems and
deliver new capabilities in a secure way.
IT Impact Report: Five Key Findings on Driving Employee
Productivity, CEB Inc., 2014. 7

Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 3

Here comes the cloud
The cloud promised to change all that. Solutions
would be easy to deploy and maintain, bringing the
business a new era of improved customer service
from IT. However, for many companies it hasn’t
happened that way. With the cloud, business
Because the cloud makes deployment easy, business departments can more easily
decision-makers are increasingly leading the selection
of new apps, devices, and technology solutions implement their own solutions
without consulting IT, leading to an increase in
shadow IT. The problem is, allowing business units without IT involvement.
to select and deploy solutions on their own can
undermine your IT strategy. While new solutions
may be a potential source of innovation, they are
frequently beyond IT’s control and can threaten
important security and compliance requirements. As an example, a marketing department that needs a file sharing
solution may purchase their own licenses for a consumer product
that they believe meets their business need. But without a strong
understanding of the security capabilities, the department could be
going against corporate security policies.

Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 4

 SHADOW IT SIDESTEPPING IT

83% 80%
of employees
of CIOs believe cloud
adoption without admit to using
IT involvement will non-approved SaaS
continue to increase. apps in their jobs.
“Global CIO Study 2015: Taking up the Task of Business The Hidden Truth Behind Shadow IT, Frost & Sullivan (An
Transformation,” Brocade, May 12, 2015. Executive Brief sponsored by McAfee), November 2013. 5

As a result, your IT team may find it more difficult to execute

strategies that are relevant and can drive long-term value for
your company. Left unchecked, this situation may leave your IT
organization increasingly out of the loop—and with less control
over IT security and operations.

Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 5

A new approach
Today’s technologies present a great
opportunity for digital transformation.
Companies need agility to shift business
models and empower employees to
innovate at previously unimaginable
speeds. IT must partner with business
unit leaders to drive innovation across
the company.
IT teams must also be able to manage a diverse
range of devices, help employees connect from
anywhere, and provide quick access to applications
and information—while maintaining security and ease
of use. If you’re tasked with managing point solutions
that were implemented by business units, this can be
extremely difficult. The resulting overlap of solutions,
lack of integration, and duplication of effort can lead to
inefficiencies and breakdowns across the organization.
Instead, you need to take the lead
by bringing new services to the business that will make
business units more productive. By developing close
working relationships with business units, you can even
present solutions—solutions built for security, simplicity,
scale, and flexibility that don’t put your organization at
risk--before the business realizes that it needs them.
Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 6
What if you could...
On the surface, taking a leadership position
may seem daunting given the intense focus
on managing daily operations.

But what if you could provide your business

users with the capabilities they need to
collaborate seamlessly, and in real time?
At the same time, what if you could take a
proactive stance to extend protection and
reduce risk?
And what if you could simplify your
productivity platform—both for
employees and for IT?
If you could, you’d be positioned to
deliver a consistent and optimized user
experience across platforms and devices
to reduce business friction and enable growth.
Then you could shift the perception of IT as a
roadblock to one of a strategic partner vital to
business success and establish IT leadership.
With Microsoft Office 365,
YOU CAN.

Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 7


WHY Microsoft
Office 365?
When you partner with Microsoft,
you can take a leadership position
In the pre-digital economy,
organizations focused on process
efficiency and executed in a divide-
and-conquer approach. In a digital
economy, the goal is to architect for
agility and new types of business
models that enable employees and
customers to innovate at a pace
unimaginable in earlier generations.
You can:
Drive innovation by enabling
employees to collaborate
seamlessly in real time
You’ll help employees innovate and
do their best work by supporting
enhanced levels of collaboration and
communication. Using Office 365,
you’ll make it easier for everyone to
work together by securely integrating
information across the enterprise.
In this environment, employees can
access information faster through any
device—and respond just as quickly.
Help your organization
transform while proactively
protecting against risks
Working with Microsoft, you can
protect your enterprise against
growing security threats from exploits,
vulnerabilities, and malware. Using
Office 365, you’ll gain new capabilities
to help eliminate external risks and
stop known and unknown threats to
sensitive data. You’ll also plug internal
gaps to security and compliance
through policy-based monitoring and
management of third-party apps in use
in your organization.
Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive
Unify your
productivity platform
Replace a complex jumble of tools with
a solution that simplifies management
and gives you centralized control
and visibility within a more secure IT
environment. Working with Microsoft,
you can help boost IT effectiveness and
maximize resources by consolidating
your management and productivity
tools. In our streamlined Office 365
environment, you can offer an improved
user experience and bolster productivity
through a fully integrated and familiar
suite of business applications.
Through these capabilities, you can
amplify business value and establish IT
as a leader within your organization.
8
 Deliver new
technology that
employees will love
before they expect it

COLLABORATION
Create a productive workplace
to embrace diverse workstyles

MOBILITY
Enable your people to get
things done anywhere

INTELLIGENCE
Provide insights to drive faster,
better business

TRUST
Protect your organization,
data and people

Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 9

Customer success story: Assurant IT provides cloud
tools to reinvent workplace in a digital world
Assurant, a Fortune 500
company that provides
risk management
solutions, is evolving
its business to satisfy
customer expectations for on-demand
service. Assurant IT led the drive to replace
standalone desktop productivity applications
with Microsoft Office 365 and reinvent
business processes across the company. “We
had to match today’s rapid pace of business
with a more mobile, productive workforce,”
says Robert Lewis, Chief Information Officer
at Assurant. “If we are to stay ahead in a
global, Internet-based market, we have to
help our 14,500 employees around the world
work faster and better together.”
Employees worldwide are working faster
now that they have simplified access to data
and colleagues everywhere through a new
intranet called Connect. Connect delivers
modern communications methods such as
Yammer—the enterprise social network in
Office 365—embedded prominently on the
intranet’s home
page, along “It’s amazingly helpful for
with a Microsoft
Office 365 Video our claims staff in the office
portal that to view video footage of
disseminates property damage.”
corporate news.
Assurant field staff spend most of their time
on the road, assessing property claims. Today,
they can upload photographs and assessments
to SharePoint Online team sites in real-time.
“The faster we get accurate information from
the field, the faster we can assess claims and
help our customers,”
says Lewis.
Establish IT Leadership: Move from reactive to proactive 10
Ready to begin a new
era of IT leadership?

Learn more about how Office

365 can support your business
needs. Click here to take a
guided tour!

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