There is a new buzzword, ‘Consumerization’, which refers to users bringing in new technology that organizations don’t formally support. The word may be new, but the phenomenon itself is not. There is a famous story of a consulting firm that went into a major corporation in the very early 1980s and asked the head of IT how many PCs were in the organization. The response from the IT exec was definitive: “We have bought 6 for IT to evaluate.” The consultants went into the organization to do their own inventory and came back a few weeks later, have found over 1,000 PCs that had been acquired by line managers using their own discretionary budgets. They were being used for spreadsheets. word processing, etc.
A usual response of IT then was not different from now: ‘Close the Doors! These represent security threats!’ The practical fact is, this reaction doesn’t work. In past, employees would sneak in ‘unauthorized’ computers by putting them in their briefcases. Now, they slip them in their coat pockets. This the age of mobility. And, as we wrote in January, insurance professionals are finding uses for it.
It may be a different role, but likely more important, and probably more interesting.