You are sitting behind the CIO's desk, and you ask the question, "What do our customers want?" Understanding and delivering that intangible can make for improved IT efficiency and higher net profits. Ignore it, and you can create a service vacuum or watch while your company suffers and undermines the value of your core product. Whether or not customers have an intrinsic need for the latest Intel or AMD processors is important when you make it your priority to champion a technology. Are you fighting to get system engineer certification for your staff when the small company you work for is perfectly content with two local area networks? You may sway decision makers to fund your project, but is it in the best interest of the company?

Most CIOs have to make the adjustment from production to customization as their organizations grow to in a client server medium. IT departments that simply maintain legacy systems can do well continuing with production, and probably shouldn't try to customize. But evaluating products, processes, and life cycles of systems through the eyes of customers can be quite valuable.

At its most basic level, customization creates a method to get customer feedback that enables an IT department to quickly react or change. The links IT can forge with customers, internally or externally, when they move to customize processes can solidify the belief with senior management that IT is a permeable part of the organization, not just a rigid cost center.

In traditional production oriented IT shops, companies consider the CIO successful if systems continue to function and upgrades are maintained at a respectful rate. In a customization oriented department, every IT client should be able to access relevant information about the IT processes and functionality.

Dell corporation is the master of this, and their web site continues to be the standard on which IT e-commerce will be judged. Dell already had a strong candidate for price sensitive notebook buyers with their consumer line of computers. But Dell's corporate clients wanted something different. They were less concerned with best prices or fastest processor. Instead, corporate customers wanted a fleet of notebooks with specific configurations of memory, screen size, and features. Dell adjusted their product cycle based on interactive customer feedback. — They created a specific line of notebooks for corporate IT managers.

If Dell is the master of e-commerce, CompUSA is their counterpart for establishing a direct link with customers. One of CompUSA's clients needed more purchasing support, but couldn't fund the funds needed to hire another employee. CompUSA negotiated with the IT manager to provide a purchaser situated onsite at the client's location. In turn, the IT department agreed to give the vendor the first right of refusal on IT purchases, and CompUSA agreed to have their purchaser place orders with other competitors when they couldn't fulfill an opportunity. From the client's viewpoint, an entire employee's salary was saved. For that client, CompUSA changed from a vendor to a business partner. Over the course of a year, CompUSA price matched almost all hardware and software proposals and had them "beat by a dollar." Sales volume went up, and only the most technical service calls were transferred to competitors who had more certified networking engineers on staff.

Customization at its best makes it hard for customers to go elsewhere. In software, it creates an interface that becomes the standard that clients expect. In their eyes, they need the product or service again and again. It becomes the standard for which all competition is scrutinized and compared with, usually less favorably. The CIO's creativity and resiliency will shine in this process, as there is no single recipe to make this transition. Giving customers the choice of several programming features might be appropriate for internal data warehouse clients, but could be the wrong strategy for an external service industry that could have infinite options to tackle. In any case, translating customer information into a strategy that allows you to deliver higher perceived value at a lower cost will reap the rewards of IT customization. Are you prepared to help your clients this way?