Should IT have a seat at the revenue table?

For IT teams at many companies, it’s not enough to keep the infrastructure running—you’re increasingly expected to drive revenue, too, thanks in large part to AI.

Organizations’ need to monetize their huge AI investments is forcing IT professionals, particularly CIOs and CTOs, to focus on how their projects translate into cash, said Brian Clark, president of ChargeBee, which builds SaaS tools for revenue growth. A modern tech stack is necessary for monetizing AI.

“The CTO has historically made bets on, we’re going to drive efficiency and compliance, and automation,” Clark said. “Now we’re seeing that...That’s a bottom-line efficiency value proposition. We’re now seeing them also make bets on: ‘We’re going to contribute to revenue and we’re going to be a top-line revenue driver.’”

Boosted IT efficiency can also lead to profits: McKinsey & Company research found that enterprises with “high-performing IT organizations” have increased revenue growth up to 35%.

Talking to the business. As IT plays a bigger part in the revenue conversation, IT pros need to communicate effectively with non-tech leaders about all the ways workflows and practices add to the bottom line. Successfully demonstrating the tech shop’s role in cost savings and earnings could translate into a boosted budget for the IT team.

Brad Cline, VP of IT at SolarWinds, told IT Brew that he has “been shot down 100 times on trying to provide solutions that I saw as critical from my viewpoint.” However, he was able to secure funding “for this or that other initiative that I thought could do things to really improve the way the business was running.”

For IT pros, it’s important to have a seat at the financial operations table, Cline said. Specifically, if business leaders are ignoring AI or another emerging technology, or can’t address the strategic value coming down the path, he said, “your business is at risk.”

“Businesses trying to respond and dumping millions, billions into catching up with this next [tech] thing every time,” Cline said. “It is so critical that IT leadership role [is] sitting at the table…They should be a technologist that’s looking and thinking about how everything’s going to change, and how that might impact our business dramatically.”

Inside the closed-door meetings. Dominick Profico, CTO at Bridgenext, said that the advice he’d give to organizations is to “recognize that you need to operate a little differently and then take advantage of the tools to help you get there.”

But IT professionals themselves must bring innovative, transformative ideas into the business environment, Profico added, with the understanding of an organization’s revenue goals and approach to achieving those goals.

The State of the CIO Survey from CIO.com reported that 68% of chief information officers consider creating new revenue-generating initiatives as part of their job function. Some of those activities include automating business or IT processes, reporting on the value that IT offers, building teams focused on innovation, and more.

Profico said he will bring a story to company leadership about a potential new tech tool, along with a financial spreadsheet breaking down how it could impact costs and business strategy.

“It’s beholden on an IT organization, on an IT leader, to enable [and] facilitate that for their teams to be able to have a seat at that table and tell those stories in a way that non-technical people, that the finance team can consume it and understand that it fits into their worldview,” Profico said.