One-and-a-half cheers for the ecommerce director

News that Great Universal Stores (GUS) has appointed an ecommerce director sounds like a good story all round (http://www.silicon.com/a33464 ). Here is an enlightened company recognising the potential of electronic commerce and as a result it has put information technology at the heart of its business. A cause, incidentally, very close to the heart of Silicon.com.

Truly a win-win? Well no, if you follow the logic of Chris Collins, director of Pagoda Consulting. Speaking on Behind the Headlines last week (http://www.silicon.com/a33542 ), Collins claims the appointment is bad news for IT directors and would-be IT directors because it effectively sidelines them. It shows, according to Collins, that an increasing number of companies despair of the business skills of their technical staff and are looking to employ people without a technical background to liase with IT departments. Ecommerce director or IT director? GUS appears to have chosen, although the company has retained its enlightened credentials with the subsequent appointment of John Peace, a former programmer, as group chief executive (http://www.silicon.com/a33670 ).

The ecommerce director in question, Michael de Kare-Silver, is a management consultant by trade, not an IT professional. Yes, he's written a tome on the digital age, 'E-shock', but he'll still need the aid of those in the server room to deliver the technical know-how.

As Collins concluded: "The ecommerce person in this scenario will look after the ecommerce side of things and he will need the support of someone who knows the technology. That is how they are going to move forward."

Once again the IT department will report to a non-IT function. It will do nothing to remove the glass ceiling preventing the programmer, the technician and the network manager from working their way to the board.

Equally, it may not do the company concerned much good. Ecommerce is becoming core to the business, but it remains a subset of what the IT department can offer the business. IT can help run your business more efficiently from within, which has little to do with commerce but everything to do with a more effective company. IT is about reducing the costs as much as it is about adding revenues.

The rise of the ecommerce director is only good news if he or she is accompanied by an IT director at the boardroom table. Until that happens, the ecommerce director is a hindrance, more than a help, to the cause of the IT professional.