Every once and awhile it takes an article likes this to really make me shake my head.
Published from CIO.com the article's thrust is about the importance IT departments within organizations to develop an internally marketing campaign. I've seen this type of thing far too often inside organizations, scenarios where the IT resources are spending an inordinate amount of time marketing themselves. Dreaming up internal marketing programs, designing posters!, an creating countless Powerpoint slides.
Time and time again though, the most effective way to have an organization recognize the value of it IT department is not a slick marketing campaign, but rather delivering value. Actions always speak louder than words! By focusing on delivering projects on-time and on-budget to address the specific business requirements, IT departments will be able to show an acceptable return on investment (ROI) on the IT dollars being allocated inside companies today.
Making sure the business is well aware of the IT team's accomplishments also provides IT the credibility it needs to win approval for unglamorous infrastructure investments and the goodwill to weather inevitable storms
We can see from the quote above that the author does recognize that the IT deparment's accomplishments will establish its credibility, but I would challenge that if you've provide value inside the organization (value=accomplishments) then you don't need to market - people already know about it. Too many times have I seen marketing initiatives come out of IT that focus on positives, while ignoring areas where IT has fallen short of its promise. As soon as a CIO and his/her leadership team becomes focused on marketing its successes, I say that they become distracted from delivering future successes.
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