Quick: when someone says “IT,” what comes to mind? Usually, people think of the systems they use as employees inside organizations — not customers. Here’s a familiar story: Marketing conducts research (“Big Data“! “Analytics“!) and uncovers new customer insights; it then turns to operations to translate the insights into action…and hits a wall. The people in operations are too focused on fulfilling internal requests and service agreements to worry about customers, the ones that pay real money.