Why Your Business Success Depends on Your IT Strategy: An SAP Concur Conversations podcast with ESTEVE

Often, your company’s IT department is most visible in its tactical role — helping employees use technology to get their jobs done. But it’s IT’s strategic role that directly affects how well your organization uses technology to support your business goals. IT strategists look forward, addressing questions such as: What’s next? How can new technology help our business? How can it improve the daily lives of employees?

“The business has a strategy, and we are part of this strategy,” says Joaquín Buscarons, an IT enterprise architect at ESTEVE, an international pharmaceutical company based in Spain. In this episode of the SAP Concur Conversations podcast, Buscarons speaks with Jeanne Dion, Vice President of the Value Experience team at SAP Concur, about the strategic role of IT, including the effects of cloud computing, evolving job descriptions, the importance of pilot projects, and the need for technology to support business objectives. Here are some of the highlights from their conversation.

You can listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite place to find podcasts.

IT’s role in developing a company’s strategic vision

As part of its strategic role, IT evaluates emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI), and imagines how future technologies could solve problems in yet-unknown ways as cloud-based computing has done.

“The cloud is not an option,” Buscarons says. “It’s a reality.” Having a big-picture IT vision enables companies to maximize the value of the technology.

“Cloud-based solutions do not mean that the IT architecture and IT strategy go away,” adds Dion. “IT is still very involved. They may not be running the servers, but they are involved in the strategic operation.”

Strategic IT tasks include designing the enterprise infrastructure, bridging the connections among different clouds and existing systems, and identifying opportunities supporting business goals and employees. “The new world requires some strategic vision across the organization,” Buscarons says.

How technology is rewriting job descriptions

To help organizations more effectively use technologies to support their core goals, Buscarons expects job descriptions to evolve and cross-functional cooperation to increase. “Employees on the business side and architects in IT will work closer together,” he predicts. New jobs are also emerging. For example, ESTEVE has begun to hire digital experience specialists.

Other jobs are also changing as new technologies free up employees’ time by automating manual tasks, such as filling out, approving, and processing expense reports. When employees spend less time on administrative tasks, they have more time to focus on other priorities, such as analytical work, Buscarons says.

Successful pilots open the door for more tech trials

ESTEVE uses pilot projects lasting one to two months to test new technologies. These pilot projects focus “not only on the results but the capabilities,” Buscarons says. “If we choose the appropriate project, we start to understand where are the constraints, what are the limits, which are the appropriate uses for each one.”

Positive outcomes from these pilots ease the way to introducing new technologies, such as AI, on a bigger scale. “This is the starting point for our journey with AI, which is the future,” Buscarons notes.

When pilot projects succeed, it’s easier for an organization to recognize IT’s contributions to the bottom line. The company then becomes more open to exploring other new technologies, Buscarons says.

“By the time the company is ready to adopt, you have a pilot that you’re willing to present, and you have a group that’s willing to work on this,” Dion adds. “You’ve thought about how this structure works, so you’re ready when the company is ready.”

Choose technology that fits your growth strategy

The bottom line with technology is how effectively it supports business objectives, according to Buscarons. For example, ESTEVE has a large sales force, which means a lot of expense reports. An older expense-management system required employees to scan in receipts. With SAP Concur, they simply take photos of receipts using the mobile app. Accounts payable employees can easily match the photos to the expense reports.

“You always want to make sure…whatever you’re choosing fits your company’s growth strategy,” Dion recommends. “It’s not innovation or technology because it’s shiny and new. It really directly ties to the goal of your organization.”

For instance, ESTEVE’s goals are growing revenue and reach, including expanding into additional countries and shifting its focus. It needs technology that supports these aims. “It’s in a journey to transform the business,” Buscarons says. “We have more than 90 years of history, and now we are moving from a traditional pharma to becoming a specialty pharma. We need to be sure that each step…could be scalable for the rest of the organization.”

Balancing caution with new technologies is part of IT’s strategic role. “We are followers for some technologies,” Buscarons explains. “We’re not leaders. But it’s logical to understand that we are looking across the market, how we can increase the efficiency, increase the safety, increase the performance in IT, and also be open to executing some pilot projects, to test the technology.”

Your organization’s success depends on your IT strategy. Learn why in this SAP Concur Conversations podcast.