The face-off between business and it departments costs irish industry millions of euro every year

Deep in the bowels of a office block, Colin sits staring dead eyed at one of three computer screens on his desk, his finger paused over the keyboardas he listens to a frantic, distant voice at the other end of the phoneline. Gavin from accounts is pining for his lost spreadsheet, his pleas met with an intake of breath and a smirk of condescension. Welcome to the IT department.

Meanwhile, over in the boardroom, the chief executive sits, fists clenched in front of him on the table, sweat forming on his brow. At the top of the room, the chief information officer is delivering his monthly report, explaining why IT needs "more resources" and offering his view on where the new money should be spent.

The chief executive nods occasionally. Inhis head, however, all he can hear is unintelligible noise coming out of the IT guy's mouth. "Intel servers, bleugh, bleugh, motherboards, bleugh, bleugh, bleugh . . ."

They are two tribes, both utterly dependent on each other, neither knowing or caring what the other does all day, and divided by significant language and cultural barriers. This is the business/IT face off which is costing Irish business millions of euro every year.

"In my years working in IT, business people had no idea what I was talking about," says Ade McCormack, author of The IT Value Stack, a book addressing the divide between technophiles and the rest of the world.

McCormack is an astrophysicist by training and a refers to himself as a "propeller head". But his main point is simple: to be truly effective, technology must be sewn in to the spine of the business. Great companies, he says, put innovation and technology at the centre of what they do. The people with highly specific technological skills and knowledge drive the business forward. General Electric, Apple, Tesco and other major high street retailers are examples according to the author. But these paragons of hi-tech virtue are few and far between - too often the IT department are only called upon when something goes wrong.

McCormack's own Damascene conversion occurred, like many others, when lying in a hospital bed. He was struck by the professionalism of the medical staff, their ease with the sophisticated equipment at their disposal and how seamlessly it was integrated in to the everyday job of helping people recover from illness and injury. More broadly he says, the IT industry could learn a thing or two from doctors and nurses.

"The medical industry has known for a long time that a good doctor with a bad bedside manner is a bad doctor in the eyes of the patient," he says. "An average doctor with a great bedside manner is fantastic. But the IT industry doesn't really understand the idea of service. They put low calibre people on the help desk, when the help desk is really the PR function."

More money spent on service would make an immeasurable difference to the image of IT, he says. The legacy of such poor communication is the view from the boardroom of IT as a service function, akin to catering. Essential, but low level. Not for them a seat at the top table, no entry to the real juice, where the big decisions are made.

Recent business history offers some high profile failures in the implementation of IT. Each adds to the level of mistrust of the money men. Ford's web-based supply chain management system was abandoned causing a £200 million (€267.7 million) write off. McDonald's automation plans fell by the wayside, costing the burger giant a heart stopping $170 million (€117.3 million).

McCormack offers some reasons for these and other failures. The IT industry, he says, is not mature enough yet to deliver technically sophisticated enterprise wide systems. While the hardware is reliable, the software development is not. Those tasked with delivering IT systems do not spend an adequate amount of time integrating them into the business as a whole, or educating the people to use them to their full potential. This failure is emblematic of the business side's failure to articulate what it is they want.

"We can't just blame the IT director. The boardroom must take responsibility for IT leadership," he says. "IT is a core competence. Anyone who doesn"t see that will not be leading a sustainable business in future."

He says to start by training the business people as to what the IT department can do, and train the IT people to be more responsive to the business needs.

"I'd make the IT boss a director on the board and made sure he spoke like a business person, not like a IT project manager. There is a major bank in India, ICICI, where the chief executive is also the chief information officer. That's where we need to get to."

His treatment of the problem uses a medical analogy. If you envisage IT as being akin to the body's nervous system, then failing to address the issues will increase an organisation's chances of getting Alzheimer's. Businesses generally take a short-term outlook, but the winners in the next generation of business leaders will be those who grasp the nettle and unite the two empires over which they preside.

If nothing else, at least Gavin might get his spreadsheet back.