"Customisation of IT: sorry, but it’s NOT the future. Customerisation is!"

My second and latest column on Outsource Magazine: Customisation of IT: sorry, but it’s NOT the future. Customerisation is!


Short breakout:

"What to do (1) 

IT businesses have to walk away from seller-centric and buyer-centric scenarios to “swap-centric”, "customised standard", Lego-bricks or whatever you would like to call it.
IT providers have to listen to their customers and offer open standard services from which a customer can choose add-on services – either from the provider or from other service providers. Build up services in block: don’t customise a service if your goal isn’t to be that special services provider who will get paid for the effort you put in it. Plus, IT providers have to stop selling expensive customised solutions to a standard price – stop this now. The service should be faked buyer-centric from a seller-centric truth. Since it’s the customer who needs to fulfill needs it's customer-driven and becomes standard customerisation.
Customers have to stop demanding customised IT. Mainly for these two reasons:

• They can’t afford it when IT providers get mature enough to charge for things that can’t be produced as normal.

• Most of the time: they really don’t need it.

What to do (2) 

Organisations have to customise themselves to be able to use standard IT, not reversed. Why should you tolerate a system or solution which wants to install add-ins on other systems? Why shouldn’t you be able to change the way you work - i.e. the way you get invoiced - if it differs from market standards and when the result of your change might be a better service to a lower price?! Why don’t you trust me, as a trusted advisor, when I say: “The circled roof hatch isn’t standard. We’ve tested it but it doesn’t work well. We recommend you the rectangular. It works better.""

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