According to a report by Entrust, 77% of IT professionals are worried about shadow IT. Global third party risk management survey conducted by EY shows that more than half (52%) of the respondents experienced an outage while 38% of the respondents became a victim of a data breach caused by a third party in the last couple of years.
With almost half of the employees (41%) able to acquire, create and modify technology outside IT’s control, this makes it harder for IT departments to ensure visibility. This makes them more prone to cybersecurity attacks and data breaches. That is where shadow IT can come in handy.
This article highlights seven steps you can take to take advantage of shadow IT.
7 Steps You Can Take To Gain A Competitive Advantage With Shadow IT
Here are seven steps you can take to get a competitive edge over your competitors by using shadow IT.
Take Business Relationship Programs To The Next Level
Every department is different and has their own technology needs. Understanding those specific needs are a critical first step to satisfying their needs. For this, many businesses hire business relationship managers who do this job. Some businesses even go as far as creating a communication program to keep all the stakeholders on the same page and keep them engaged throughout the process. You can even take advantage of a design thinking approach to capture the specific businesses needs and tie them to overarching business goals.
Brian Platz, CEO and co-founder of Fluree summed it up brilliantly when he said, “Organizations often seek to address shadow IT not necessarily by eliminating it, but by finding ways to bring these unsanctioned IT solutions into the fold through official channels, ensuring security, compliance, and effective management while still allowing the innovation and agility that drove employees to shadow IT in the first place,”
Leverage Collaboration and Parameters
It is important for businesses to create a governance and delivery model in order to identify the root cause of shadow IT. This will help your business during every stage from evaluating technologies such as Seattle dedicated servers to acquiring them to implementing them in different departments. It will help you onboard technology requests and how to prioritize needs in a more efficient manner.
With a collaboration plan in place along with the governance model, you are more likely to buy technology and less likely to implement it without IT intervention. Make sure to comply with policies and consider the human element. Create a culture of constant feedback and collaboration.
Prioritize Risks and Enforce Financial Controls
The good thing about shadow IT is that it helps CIOs re-evaluate their strategies around department technology.
Improve the existing applications and technologies
Join hands with business teams on new solutions
Deliver business value by capturing metrics
Optimize resource utilization for better efficiency and productivity
Establishing a formalized and transparent prioritization process is crucial for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to effectively manage shadow IT. CIOs should develop a system to capture lightweight business cases and forecast business value to prioritize new opportunities. Collaboration with Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) is essential to mitigate higher procurement costs and implementation risks associated with departments procuring their own technologies.
Furthermore, CIOs, Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), and compliance officers should institute a risk management framework to quantify the impact of shadow IT on business issues and significant risks. In addition, seeking guidance from enterprise architects on reusable platforms and common services can yield cost and business benefits, while promoting insightful governance and detailed documentation discourages shadow IT and fosters collaborative operating models.
Develop Low Code and No Code Frameworks
If you are one of those businesses who is leveraging no code and low code development tools then it is imperative to have a framework and model in place for it. These governance models can help you with everything from evaluating app ideas to defining roles and responsibilities to fulfilling different requirements. By labeling implementation and support as business requirements, you can address shadow IT problems.
Democratize Data Science To Build Self Service Capabilities
The proliferation of data visualization and business intelligence tools have forced businesses to democratize data science by creating a program for data science education and awareness. These programs will help them reduce the data debt. Proactive data governance along with data integration can improve self service capabilities of businesses. This can help you reduce the tool sprawl and make data driven decisions.
Create a Generative AI Strategy and Refine It
Generative AI has taken the business world by storm. Even though, majority of businesses have already adopted it or are planning to adopt it in the future, the downside of these technologies are preventing them from doing so. What they don’t realize is that they are missing the opportunity to take the first mover advantage.
If you want to make the most of generative AI, you need to create a generative AI strategy. Continuously tweak it to meet the evolving business needs. IT leaders must have both a short term and long term horizon when creating a generative AI strategy. Everything from departments, data points, outcomes and opportunities should be clearly defined.
Develop a Co-Creation Culture
The gap between IT and business departments is what leads to shadow IT. As an IT leader, your job should be to bridge that gap and bring both parties closer to one another. This involves providing business knowledge to IT professionals so they can understand the challenges of business and vice versa. You can also take a shift left approach to take advantage of tech savvy individuals who are working in other functional units such as marketing, sales and human resource.
How do you use shadow IT to your advantage? Share it with us in the comments section below.
