Scott Herrmann, VP of Information Systems & Technology at Sheakley

Do you view business as a customer or a partner of IT?

“In my twenty-five years in IT, I have always viewed myself as a partner to the business, and I really like the business piece of it – I think IT is here to solve business problems. When it is viewed as customer-supplier, it can become a more combative relationship in which IT is often arguing about what it can or cannot do. But when it is a partnership and when business and IT share the same vision, goals and objectives, then the sum of the parts is greater.

In the last two years we have really seen that culture shift here at Sheakley. The way things were done in the past often left both parties dissatisfied. Business would tell IT what they thought they wanted; IT would go to work on it for six months and return with something that business would then say was not what they needed. Now that we have moved to an agile method of working as a partner to the business, with the same goals, we are driving literally hundreds of possibilities around how technology can make things more efficient, like automation that shifts busywork to the system and allows employees to focus on the message. In the partnership relationship, much better outcomes are derived for any business problem that needs to be solved.”