IT professionals must explain how technology helps meet charity priorities if they want to be more than an “overhead cost”, the director of information services at Barnardo’s told the Charity Technology Conference last week.

Bob Darby (pictured) told delegates that the landscape they are operating in changing rapidly and that digital transformation of is “something that is new and totally disruptive”.

“One major issue is that we struggle to articulate the value of IT,” he said. “If we can’t do that then we are just seen as an overhead cost.”

By not explaining the value of IT it ends up “just competing for resources” against other departments because it is not seen as an “intrinsic part of what the charity is about”, he said.

“Understand the business concerns that might be in place to measure the business value of IT,” he said.

Darby added that it was important to find ways of communicating with colleagues using “language they understand”.

“Don’t talk about technology, talk about the business we are in,” he said.

Be proactive

Rosie Slater, chief information officer at the British Red Cross, who was also speaking at the conference, said it was important for IT leaders to be to be proactive when talking to their colleagues.

“So often we answer the question we are asked rather than giving any thought to the question,” she said.

She also said that it was important for IT teams to be seen to be fixing routine problems before others in the organisation will begin to trust them with bigger projects.

“If the everyday experience of email isn’t reliable,” she said, “then they are not going to ask us to help them change things”.

Slater said that in order to get others in the organisation to support IT and digital projects, the technology department had to show them evidence of how it would help their beneficiaries.

“If you we can show this is going to make a difference to people they will do it,” she said.