Quantifiable data is a lovely thing. There’s something so brain-pleasing about sortable, crunchy numbers you can toss into a pivot table and pop out into a chart or graph to show just how successful your company is. I mean, who doesn’t love a good dashboard?! But it can be too easy to lose sight of what real innovation and success looks like and feels like when only considering easily-graphed data… sometimes, you’ve got to get out of the realm of quantifiable IT reporting and start dabbling in the qualifiable.

Historically, IT departments have been focused on reporting tidy, quantifiable metrics like service level agreements (SLAs), uptime, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Even as features like cloud infrastructures, eCommerce platforms, and advanced analytics joined the portfolio, it seems all too easy to come back to charts and graphs to “prove” success.

And while it’s true that these technical details are quite necessary for maintaining operational stability, they hardly scratch the surface of the full strategic value that IT can deliver to the organization (or how you should be thinking about and leveraging your IT function).

To demonstrate the true value of their capabilities, tech function leaders need to shift their IT reporting approach from operational metrics to business outcomes — highlight how your IT investments don’t just keep the engine of your company running, but rather how they enable growth, innovation, and long-term success.

“The Way We’ve Always Done Things.”

For years, the primary focus of IT reporting has been on operational metrics: are our systems up and running? Are we meeting SLAs? Have any possible vulnerabilities been addressed and shored up?

Questions like these are critical for ensuring that IT systems remain secure and reliable, which do certainly support business continuity. But these operational metrics are just one piece of the overall puzzle.

While uptime and vulnerability reports are essential, they don’t paint the full picture of IT’s contribution to business success. What’s more, IT departments can sink significant amounts of time and resources into focusing on technical performance, while all around them leaders in the business world remain unaware of how IT can be leveraged to foster growth, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation. In a lot of instances, it’s “the way we’ve always done things.” But that doesn’t make it right.

Shifting the Focus

To more fully harness overall capabilities for business growth, IT reporting must evolve beyond just technical performance. Instead of merely reporting that systems are up and running, with a pop-y little graph to underscore the data, IT leaders need to demonstrate how technology is driving business outcomes. For example: how do IT investments support sales growth? How does technology enable faster product development or provide better insights into customer behavior? Here are a few areas where IT can showcase its business impact:

• Ecommerce: Many businesses rely on ecommerce as a primary revenue stream, and within the current of this stream are IT systems, supporting everything from product listings to payment processing while ensuring these systems are optimized to maintain and grow sales. Reports should focus on how IT investments in infrastructure (such as cloud platforms and content delivery networks) are helping to improve the online shopping experience, reduce cart abandonment, and increase sales and customer retention.
• Analytics: IT plays a pivotal role in enabling data-driven decision making. By providing platforms that gather, store, and analyze data, IT helps the business gain insights that can be used to refine strategies, improve operations, and enhance customer experiences. Reporting on the impact of analytics platforms should skip the readily-quantifiable basics and instead highlight how these systems enable better business decisions that lead to revenue growth, improved operational efficiency, and competitive advantage.
• Innovation: IT is crucial to innovation; it’s the fuel that makes the engine run. From cloud computing and AI to machine learning and automation, IT systems are enabling companies to develop new products, services, and business models. IT leaders should report on how their programs and platforms are fostering further innovation, whether through enabling faster development cycles, supporting agile methodologies, or providing the necessary tools for experimentation and new product development.

Find a New Narrative With Your IT Reporting

It’s not enough to just highlight the strategic areas where IT has an impact — IT leaders should also focus on specific programs and initiatives they’ve undertaken and the results those programs have achieved for the business.

For instance, if the company has undergone a major cloud migration, the report should not focus solely on the technical aspects of the migration, such as how many servers were moved or the details of data transfer. Instead, the report should emphasize the business outcomes: Did the migration result in cost savings? How has it improved scalability, operational efficiency, or responsiveness to customer demand? Has it accelerated time-to-market for new products or improved the customer experience during peak times?

Similarly, if IT has rolled out a new CRM system, the focus should be on how this technology has enabled better customer relationships. Did it help boost sales or improve customer satisfaction? Has it reduced customer churn by improving service levels?

Don’t lean on the data; tell a story, paint a picture, and show the wider impact of what happened and what comes next.

Overcoming Challenges of Change

Shifting IT reporting from operational details to strategic business value is not without its challenges. Many IT departments are still heavily focused on technical performance metrics, and changing this mindset will almost assuredly meet resistance; kicking down the door of “we’ve always done it this way” can be harder than it looks. Additionally, business leaders may not fully understand the capabilities and potential of modern IT systems, which makes it infinitely trickier for IT to articulate its value.

To overcome these challenges, IT leaders should foster a culture of collaboration with business teams. By working closely with business leaders to identify key business outcomes, IT can ensure that reporting reflects the priorities that matter most to the company. Additionally, clear communication and education will be essential to helping business leaders understand how IT enables growth and competitive advantage.

A Note About Private Equity

This evolution in IT reporting doesn’t just matter to CIOs and internal teams — it’s especially relevant in the context of private equity. Whether you’re an investor evaluating potential acquisitions or a business owner preparing for an exit, how you position IT can materially impact valuation, deal confidence, and post-acquisition performance.

For buyers, traditional IT reports leaning heavily on uptime and ticket resolution offer little insight into what actually drives enterprise value. But when IT reporting is reframed around business outcomes — increased sales velocity, faster product development cycles, improved customer retention — it becomes a strategic asset instead of a cost center. It helps investors identify scalable, tech-enabled growth levers hiding in plain sight.

And for sellers? Positioning IT as a value generator, not just an overhead line item, helps sharpen the story for potential buyers. If your reporting shows how tech investments have directly supported revenue growth, improved gross margins, or enabled new business models, you’re not just selling a stable business — you’re selling a platform for expansion. That’s the kind of narrative that moves multiples.

In other words… metrics prove you’ve maintained the machine. Outcomes prove you’ve built a growth engine…  and that’s exactly what PE is looking for.

“The new way we do things”

IT is no longer a simple support function; it is a key driver of business success, and IT leaders neglect that at their peril. By shifting the focus of IT reporting from operational metrics to business outcomes, IT leaders can show the true, inherent value of their work. Whether it’s through enhancing ecommerce performance, enabling data-driven decisions, or supporting innovation, IT is integral to driving business growth and long-term success. IT isn’t a car engine keeping the business running on a level plane; it can be a jet engine, driving exponential growth across the business as a whole.

If you’re ready to stop crunching data and start driving narratives, reach out to us — we’d be happy to help you start kicking down the door of “the way we do things” and start developing your new way.