What You Need to Know About IT,
In One Concise Package
Demystifying IT has been hailed as the one book about information technology that leaders of midsized companies should read. Given the importance of IT in today’s world, it might also be the most timely and valuable business book of any kind to be published recently.
The co-authors are masters of leveraging IT for creating sustainable competitive advantages for businesses. They’ve been at it for decades, solving problems that defied other experts, and leading digitization projects which have boosted client companies into new realms of growth and profit. Their core messages in a nutshell are these: Executives on the “business side” of a firm do not have to understand the complex details of information technology. What’s crucial is to grasp the powerful business leverage that digital tech, in its various forms, can provide.
Key question: Would you use a smartphone only to make phone calls? Of course not. Yet many companies are doing the equivalent when they use IT mainly for routine functions, and list the IT budget as an expense under G&A costs. The authors call this “the G&A stage” of IT development—a natural starting point, but one that a company must move beyond, in order to compete. As the book shows with real-life case stories, companies that do best in our digital age are firing on all cylinders. They leverage IT to reach, serve, and retain customers better, driving up sales revenues. They streamline operations to cut costs across the board. And they tap the powers of IT to break into new, blue-ocean markets while competitors struggle to defend their existing turf.
Demystifying IT offers a simple diagnostic chart for gauging where your company stands in this race. Then it delivers a roadmap for moving up the scale, step by step. The case stories are about midsized companies the authors have worked with, in industries from retail banking to smart manufacturing. These vividly told stories illustrate the many kinds of opportunities that modern IT can present — along with basic principles and best practices for getting the most bang per buck invested in IT.
The book also describes common pitfalls to avoid. Cross-industry studies show that very frequently, big digital projects have taken companies down a rabbit hole of burnt costs and frustrating delays with unsatisfying results. Authors Bhopi and Saurajit know how this happens. They’ve been called to perform many a rescue mission. In Demystifying IT, they give the reader strategic guidelines for doing it right from square one.
Last but far from least, Demystifying IT lays out a series of practical steps toward solving a fundamental problem: how to get the business and IT sides of a company working in harmony. Technology is a human creation. Harnessing its powers for business requires human collaboration. This book’s authors are two humans who can help you find a promising path into the future.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Why to Read This Book + What’s in It
Chapter 1: Into the IT-Verse
Chapter 2: Impacting EBITDA: Step by Step, Line by Line
Chapter 3: “Thrive to Survive”: How a (Formerly) Small Bank Is Doing IT
Chapter 4: Finding a Blue Ocean and Founding a Business Powered by IT
Chapter 5: Reinventing a Sales Model with IT and AI
Chapter 6: Boosting Returns from Embedded Technology in Manufacturing
Chapter 7: Bridging the Gap between IT and Business: Problems and Solutions
Chapter 8: Bridging the Gap: Building Relationships That Work
Chapter 9: A Roadmap to the Future
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
About the Author :
BHOPI DHALL is a grandmaster of the digital age. During 29 years at the seminal computing company Texas Instruments, he helped to create many foundations of today’s technology. In 1998 he founded the consulting firm CG Infinity. As CEO, he now oversees its international teams from HQ in Plano, Texas. Bhopi brings to the table deep knowledge of IT in every form.
Bhopi currently resides in Texas.
SAURAJIT KANUNGO, President of CG Infinity, is passionate about leveraging the vast business potential of IT. Starting as a chartered accountant in India, he upgraded business systems at the country’s major airports, then moved to the U.S. and focused on helping midsized companies to flourish. Saurajit has served hundreds of clients across many industries and looks forward to each new project.
Saurajit currently resides in Texas.
Review :
"In this book, you will find an application of practical and pragmatic thinking that removes the shroud of mystery from IT. Bhopi and Saurajit have simplified intimidating concepts and distilled them down to the essence of what is really important about the interrelationship between business and technology. They have served up these concepts in a consumable and relatable package. This book is ideal for the executive who finds IT to be otherwise a proverbial 'black box.' Read it to discover what Demystifying IT can do to transform how you think about technology. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did."
-- Martin Jenns
Executive Vice President and President, Assurant Global Automotive "This book is a must-read for CEOs. In a succinct and efficient way, it accomplishes the title: *demystifying IT. That is only the beginning, because it leads to the true purpose and value of the book: it provides concrete advice and a roadmap for how to lead a company in utilizing technology as a strategic business tool, and how to avoid the pitfalls of failed or bogged - down technology projects. There are general business truths in this book that CEOs will already know, such as ' every company today is an IT company ' and ' you must thrive to survive.' The authors describe in concise terms how to bridge those truths to reality for your company. I particularly enjoyed that the book is built on a deep understanding of business. One truth it brings home is that IT people must understand the business, or IT projects within the company will fail. The gap between IT and businesspeople must be closed, and this book offers real-world solutions for how to do that, as well as insights into hiring the right IT people. The compelling content and real-world examples make this a top read for CEOs and executive teams across the company."
-- Kathryn Koorenny
*General Counsel and Managing Director, AlixPartners
"Bhopi Dhall has been solving computer engineering challenges since the days when it was a challenge just to produce a 1 or 0. This book is written from the collective wisdom of the company he founded as they've tackled the critical challenges of software development: management, design, innovation, and delivery. From their unique seat in the industry, the talented people of CG Infinity share the lessons they've learned over decades."
-- Jim Smelley
Cofounder and CEO of Thought Ensemble; Coauthor of Reboot: Competing with Technology Strategy
"I have lived this book. Today, I'm the vice president of customer experience at an IT consulting firm. I'm a technologist and a strategic bridge between IT and their counterparts in operations and sales. I've led, and seen, my fair share of transformations in the name of efficiency, cost-to-serve reductions, and customer experience improvements. But roughly half a decade ago when I met Saurajit Kanungo and later Bhopi, this was not the case. I was a quality manager then. My purpose was to improve the operations of our company's contact center. Studying trends found within contract-center ed data, my team and I worked with operations leadership to make training-based and process changes that were supposed to help contact center personnel improve their metrics. It was a repetitive process that maintained the status quo but did very little to move the needle. We had problems that wouldn't yield to our best efforts. Cost-to-serve remained high. The level of customer attrition was scary. We could see that within the data we had been mining, there was a potential roadmap to solutions. The data highlighted correlations to our problems, and if it could be fed as fuel into a processing engine, the output might dramatically enhance our contact center's capabilities. What we lacked was the right engine and people to help us operate it. Enter Saurajit and his team. Long story short: with their help we shaped our company's data and weaponized it for good. We created automations and automatons that helped our customers solve problems before they knew they had problems and allowed them access to our company and products without having to access our human resources. Customer experience went up; attrition and costs went down, and the company continues to innovate today -- constantly iterating on what has been done previously for a continually better experience and EBITDA. Other results? Promotions and amazing new cutting-edge technology to work on and implement. Constant learning of new methods, management styles, and approaches to complex problem-solving and cross-functional team design. A true partnership, in which the client company and the consultants shared benefits and became better. The work, the results, and the learnings were all so fantastic that today, I now work with Saurajit and Bhopi at CG Infinity -- and am lucky enough to call them friends and mentors. Bhopi and Saurajit are IT sherpas. They are the Obi-Wan to your Luke Skywalker, the Gandalf to your Frodo or Bilbo; the kind of trustworthy guides who can help you to be heroic. They have built their knowledge throughout the evolution of IT, and they bring that to you. They help you further define your problem, then help you design your solution and give you the tools to build it. In the process, they create a partnership between IT and other parts of the business that wasn't previously there. Now these wizards have distilled their experience and approaches into this book. It can act as your roadmap. Read the book.
-- Mike Parish
Vice President of Customer Experience, CG Infinity
