The overwhelming pace and scale of customer demands means companies will do business differently in 2008. That means IT personnel, including chief information officers, can not rely on traditional approaches to change, such as improving operational efficiency or reducing IT costs. Instead, CIOs must find new tools, methods and processes to address their agendas for 2008.
Challenges for a new year
One thing on the agenda for the coming year is increased business demands. CIOs will need to focus their agendas on more than just delivering IT services, keeping the infrastructure running and meeting service-level agreements. Rather, they will need to address:
- How they can contribute to solving key business outcomes, and how they are measured using business metrics
- How they can effectively manage the IT organisation and resources
- Key technologies that address the above priorities, including hardware, software and services
CIOs say that addressing these broad challenges means they must broaden their way of thinking and find new ways to affect their companies.
In the near term, CIOs and their staffs are expected to play a significant role in:
- Improving business processes
- Controlling enterprise costs
- Raising workforce performance
For the long term, they will be expected to build new strategic capabilities that will use information to attract and retain customers.
“To make progress, CIOs need to have a deep understanding of the organisation and the industry that they are part of, and have a good grasp of the available technology solutions that can be deployed,” says Lee Bonham, worldwide solutions business development manager at HP. “In addition, they need to have developed a trusting relationship with their chief executive officers and other executive peers.”
Delivering better business outcomes
To guide their companies into 2008 and beyond, CIOs will have to manage and transform their businesses.
To manage better, CIOs must have the right technology. To determine what is right for them, they need to understand business and industry trends, and know the requirements of the line-of-business executives in their companies. Then, they must make sure the technology solution is built to today's business requirements.
CIOs can transform their companies with technology leadership. To do this, they need to be able to accurately predict trends in the business and industry, and plan ahead for the likely requirements of line-of-business leaders.
In sum, CIOs can deliver better business outcomes by managing the business better with the right technology, and transforming the business with technology leadership.
Bonham says, “One important challenge that we hear about in many of our discussions with CIOs is the need to align IT to business objectives. To achieve this, CIOs and their immediate staff need to talk the language of business and explain the benefits of IT in business terms. At the same time, they need to know what technology can deliver. This is where HP can often help.”
Bonham sees the role of the CIO changing over time, moving from a technology focus to concentrate more on the business outcomes from IT.
“To achieve this they need to address issues of IT governance and demonstrate the financial benefits from their IT investment,” he says.
Top CIO agendas for 2008
Business- Improve business operations & processes
- Control enterprise-wide operating costs
- Expand use of information across the business
- Attract, retain and grow customer relationships
Management
- Deliver projects that enable business growth
- Link business & IT strategies
- Improve the quality of IT processes and service delivery
- Consolidate and manage a flexible technology infrastructure
Technology
- Business intelligence applications
- Legacy application modernisation, upgrade and replacement
- Real time infrastructure (virtualisation, utility)
- Service-oriented applications and architecture
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