No light without dark : making the most of ‘shadow IT’

In the last few decades, technology has created a modern digital workforce that is technically skilled and adept at finding innovative solutions that would help them succeed at work. However, with 95% of employees struggling with digital friction in the workplace - including a lack of access to the right tools - ambitious employees who are hungry for results have often needed to explore fixes outside the scope of existing systems provided by their employers.

On top of that, the popularity of cloud-based apps has resulted in business processes often ending up fragmented across various systems, requiring workers to devote time to manual maintenance. This has accelerated the spread of (the unnecessarily ominous sounding) ‘shadow IT’, or applications that savvy workers use without official authorization to help them bypass limitations and get work done. In a perfect world, a balance can be struck between giving these technically skilled workers freedom to integrate and optimize processes while ensuring IT remains in charge of technology at the architectural level.

The traditional approach of tightly controlled IT landscapes within organizations doesn’t work as well as it once did given the proliferation of systems for just about every task, which has made it unsustainable for IT to do it all in many cases. Shadow IT is a natural evolution born from workers growing more comfortable with digital tools and looks like it’s here to stay, with Gartner finding it makes up 30-40% of all IT spending across large enterprises even though research shows nearly seven in ten organizations have been compromised as a result of it.

That said, there is ample opportunity to take advantage of and nurture a new generation of strategic business technologists. Organizations that can master this shift will benefit in a bevvy of ways en route to better business outcomes and positive impact on customer and employee experience.

Flipping the narrative

For tech and business leaders, shadow IT is not only a risk, but also an opportunity to take off the strain of IT departments. The possibility of adept workers identifying and resolving application issues relieves IT of the need to develop solutions and integrate them on an organizational level. Rather than bearing the burden of finding or building new solutions on their own, tech leaders can instead take a more strategic, supervisory role by overseeing how applications recommended by workers are integrated with existing enterprise architectures.

This is especially critical to take into account the generational differences emerging within the modern workforce, given that digital natives (those who have grown up in a tech-led world) are starting to play a larger role. Business leaders can empower these younger workers to be part of decisions about the technology business uses and help upskill less technically adept colleagues. This also helps in addressing skills gaps that the IT industry is facing.

A transparent approach, where employees aren’t secretly leaning on unauthorized applications out of sight, will help shore up cybersecurity vulnerabilities while also providing these de facto business technologists (those who sit outside IT but have the skills to ensure their organization gets the most value from its technology investments), the freedom to find and implement solutions that truly work.

Creating an integration-first culture

As a next step, business leaders need to focus on uncovering the underlying motivations behind the use of shadow IT. Often, it’s about effectively finding workarounds to common data integration problems, like systems not being updated in real-time and needing manual inputs. Companies should work on developing a cohesive plan for recommending, testing, and finally adopting IT applications that align with their strategy, goals and existing application portfolio.

The repercussions of imprecise and mismatched data can be significant, with The Alan Turing Institute estimating that poor data quality costs the UK economy £10-20 billion annually. Organizations will increasingly rely on data to inform decision-making, particularly as they scale, however, data silos create barriers that hinder collaboration, creativity, and progress. Once, as a result of great transparency, IT teams become aware of applications being used and their purposes, they can work on integrating them more efficiently.

This enhances the speed and precision with which business decisions can be made, owing to better availability and timeliness of data.

Emerging from the shadows

Taming shadow IT will increase in importance as it becomes more widespread: Gartner predicts 75% of all employees will use some form of it by 2027.

Leveraging business technologists is an essential way for companies looking to stay ahead of the curve. With many already adept at automating workflows, they have the potential to fill the tech skill gaps so many businesses are struggling to address. While they may not possess all the necessary abilities, considering a lack of options on the market an effective middle-ground would be to pair these technically proficient employees with low- or no-code platforms, easing the burden on stretched IT teams. IT teams will stay at the helm of wider tech strategy, but as business technologists will ultimately have the most hands-on experience and will know where gaps in technology lie within the business, they will be invaluable in finding solutions if their skills are nurtured correctly.

As businesses adopt more and more cloud-based applications, the biggest winners will be those that can stay ahead of the curve and look at shadow IT as a fast-track to a more innovative and integrated approach to business technology

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