Written by: Ben DeBow | Founder and CEO of Fortified | Author of End of Abundance in Tech
Introducing Our New Blog Series: The Evolution of Technology’s Role in Business.
We’re excited to kick off a 12-part blog series, written by Ben DeBow, exploring how the role of technology is transforming in the modern business landscape. As we move into a new era of efficiency and optimization, businesses must rethink how they leverage technology—not as a cost burden, but as a critical driver of value, precision, and innovation.
In this series, we’ll explore how organizations can make every dollar count, ending the era of abundance and wasteful spending. In the first post, Ben walks us through the changing perception of technology and why aligning tech with business outcomes is now more crucial than ever for success in today’s competitive environment.
Introduction
When I began in technology in the ’90s, the first online systems at organizations were typically accounting, human resources, email, and other core systems to run the business. These systems were often standalone with limited integration. While important, most of the business revenue was still tied to physical services or products. Technology was relatively new and viewed mainly as a cost center whose budget kept increasing year after year, despite difficulties in justifying ROI. Technology leadership often didn’t have a seat at the executive table; if they did, it wasn’t a strategic enabler. This led to frequent misalignment between business goals and tech capabilities. Looking back, it’s striking how much technology’s role in business has evolved since then.
Now, in today’s digital age, technology is the backbone of modern business and is driving innovation. Yet, paradoxically, many organizations still view their technology departments as cost centers rather than value generators. This outdated perspective is not just a semantic issue—it’s a fundamental misalignment that can hinder innovation, stifle growth, and leave businesses trailing behind other competitors that value their technology teams. The risk of falling behind without valuing technology is real and can lead to significant loss. It’s time for a paradigm shift in how we perceive, measure, and communicate the impact of technology within our organizations to avoid such potential loss.
Despite the digital revolution transforming businesses across industries, the perception of technology as a mere operational expense persists in many boardrooms. This view often stems from how technology departments traditionally measure and report their activities. Let’s consider a common scenario:
A CIO presents their quarterly report to the board, proudly stating:
“We’ve completed 15 projects this quarter, with 95% delivered on time and within budget. Our system uptime was 99.999%, and we’ve reduced our ticket and product backlog by 30%.”
While these metrics are important for internal operations, they fail to resonate with business leaders focused on bottom-line results. To them, this report translates to: “We spent a lot of money, completed some projects, and did not have any technology outages.” It is valuable to deliver technology projects on time and have your mission-critical systems processing orders, but how do we say the same message differently? How do we communicate the impact and value the technology teams are providing?
Shifting the Narrative: Technology as a Value Center
To transform this perception, we need to fundamentally change how we measure and communicate the impact of technology. Instead of focusing solely on operational metrics, we must directly tie our initiatives to business outcomes. Here’s how the same CIO could reframe their report:
“Our technology initiatives this quarter have directly contributed to a 15% increase in customer retention, resulting in an estimated $2 million in preserved annual recurring revenue. Our new mobile app, launched on time and under budget, has already generated $500,000 in new sales. Additionally, our automation efforts have reduced processing times in the finance department by 40%, freeing up 1,000 staff hours per month for higher-value activities.”
This approach doesn’t just change the conversation; it changes the entire perception of technology’s role in the organization. Another important consideration when communicating the value is to talk about it in years, as the business applications will be online for 5, 10, and more. Let’s delve deeper into how we can make this shift.
Measuring What Matters: Connecting Tech to Business Value
The first step in this transformation is to develop new metrics that directly link technological initiatives to business outcomes. Here are some examples of how different technology projects can be measured in terms of business value:
- Infrastructure Upgrades: Instead of reporting on server uptime or network speed improvements, focus on the business impact. For instance: “Our cloud migration has reduced our disaster recovery time from 24 hours to 30 minutes, minimizing potential revenue loss during outages by up to $100,000 per hour.”
- Software Development: Rather than counting lines of code or story points completed, measure the impact of new features. Example: “The new recommendation engine we implemented has increased average order value by 20%, translating to an additional $1.5 million in quarterly revenue, and over the next five years, it should process around $30,000,000 in revenue.”
- Cybersecurity Investments: Don’t just report the number of threats blocked. Quantify the risk mitigation. For example: “Our enhanced security measures have reduced our risk exposure by 60%, potentially saving us $5 million in breach-related costs and preserving customer trust valued at $20 million in annual revenue.”
- Data Analytics Projects: Instead of focusing on the amount of data processed, highlight the insights generated and their business impact. For instance: “Our new customer segmentation model has improved marketing campaign effectiveness by 35%, reducing customer acquisition costs by $500,000 this quarter.”
- Enterprise Data Strategy: Most companies are data hoarders, so instead of communicating that the technology team removed 250TB of data through data lifecycle initiatives, focus on the impact of the initiatives in dollars. The data team has implemented a new data lifecycle initiative that will increase the performance of the applications by 15% and the core systems’ capacity by 25%.
- Testing and Quality Assurance: Rather than reporting on the number of tests run, focus on the business value of quality improvements. Example: “Our enhanced testing process prevented 15 critical defects from reaching production this quarter, saving an estimated $500,000 in potential lost revenue and emergency fixes.”
Speaking the Language of Business: Communication is Key
Changing how we measure impact or value is only half the battle. We also need to change how we communicate about technology. This means translating technical achievements into business outcomes that resonate with non-technical stakeholders. At Fortified, every time our technology wins a technical battle, we have them tell two stories, a technical story and a business story, which everyone can understand.
Here are some examples of how to reframe technical language:
Instead of: “We optimized our database queries, reducing execution time by 2,250ms.”
Say: “We improved the performance of our customer search feature, reducing wait times by 60%. This enhancement will save $250,000 in operational costs over the next five years and significantly improve customer satisfaction scores.”
Instead of: “We implemented a new CI/CD pipeline, increasing our deployment frequency to 20 times per day.”
Say: “We’ve enhanced our ability to respond to market changes and customer needs. We can now release new features and fixes 20 times faster, allowing us to capture an estimated $1 million in additional revenue opportunities annually.”
Instead of: “We migrated our on-premises servers to the cloud, increasing our available storage by 200%.”
Say: “Our move to cloud infrastructure has provided us with the scalability to support our projected 50% growth over the next two years without any additional capital expenditure, saving us an estimated $2 million in hardware costs.”
Cultivating a Value-Centric Tech Culture
Transforming technology from a cost center to a value center requires more than just new metrics and communication strategies. It demands a cultural shift within the technology department itself. Here are some strategies to foster this new mindset:
- Educate and Train: Invest in programs that help tech teams understand business fundamentals. Encourage technologists to learn about finance, marketing, and operations to better align their work with business goals. They are our customer, and we need to speak their language versus them learning our language.
- Align Goals: Ensure that technology department objectives are tied to overarching business goals. For example, if the business aims to increase customer retention by 10%, the tech team should have specific initiatives that contribute to this goal.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Foster closer relationships between tech teams and other business units. This could involve embedding tech staff in business departments or creating cross-functional teams for critical projects.
- Value-Based Reporting: Develop dashboards and reports that showcase technology initiatives’ business value and impact. Make these accessible to tech teams and business leaders to create a shared understanding of technology’s value. Ensure the reporting captures the individual contributor level so everyone can show their value.
- Encourage a Value-Minded Mindset: Cultivate a culture where every team member, from junior developers to the CIO, thinks about the business value of their work. Encourage questions like “How will this project impact our bottom line?” or “What business problem are we solving?”
- Celebrate Value Creation: Recognize and reward teams and individuals who effectively demonstrate the business value of their technological contributions. This could be through formal award programs; success stories shared company-wide, or consideration in performance reviews.
Technology as a Strategic Asset
The transformation of technology from a cost center to a value center is not just about changing how others perceive us; it’s about fundamentally changing how we perceive ourselves and our work. By focusing on measuring and communicating business impact through stories, dashboards, and culture, we can demonstrate the true value of technology and secure our place as key drivers of organizational success.
This shift won’t happen overnight, but with persistent effort and a commitment to speaking the language of business, we can bridge the gap between technology and other business functions. In doing so, we’ll not only change perceptions but also unleash the full potential of technology to drive innovation, efficiency, and growth in our organizations.
As technology continues to shape the business landscape, organizations that successfully make this shift will gain a powerful competitive advantage. They’ll be better positioned to leverage technology not just as a support function but as a core driver of business strategy and success.
The question is no longer whether technology adds value—it’s whether your organization fully capitalizes on that value. Reframing technology as a value center opens up new possibilities for innovation, growth, and success in the digital age.