Redefining IT’s Role at Varian Medical Systems
James Buchanan
Rather than turning to their IT departments strictly for technical support, many companies are starting to envision a more vital, central role for IT. In this context, IT becomes a partner to the various domains of the company — sales, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, supply chain, and so on — to support value creation through improved business processes.
As any experienced CEO, CTO, or IT manager knows, this kind of transformation brings forth a number of challenges, the biggest of which often is freeing IT resources from their ongoing support responsibilities to create the departmental bandwidth needed to take on these new challenges.
Palo Alto, California-based Varian Medical Systems has successfully made this IT transformation and is reaping the benefits. Critical to achieving this goal has been the company’s strong partnership with SAP. Varian Medical’s SAP Enterprise Support engagement, in particular, is playing a crucial role by providing ongoing, mission-critical expertise and technical support during two major strategic corporate initiatives. The first involves modernizing the company’s applications landscape by undertaking a large-scale SAP software implementation. The second focuses on redefining the IT department’s role within the company.
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July 01, 2010