Have you ever made an executive decision and found that the data analysis and software you have in place made it where implementing that decision ran into massive budget and deadline delays?
Did you have a Chief Information Officer (CIO) in the room while making the decision? If you didn’t, maybe it’s time to consider bringing a CIO into your executive offices. There are three major reasons having a CIO involved in high level decision making will help your organization:
- A CIO brings an IT Development background into the decision making.
- A CIO increases or implements a continuous improvement mindset in the organization due to the continually advancing nature of technology.
- A CIO increases data analysis opportunities to be used across business units because the IT department has a better understanding of the corporate strategy
A CIO brings an IT Development background into the decision making.
When you look at executive offices, you have the Chief Executive Officer that typically has a diverse background and a high level of success over decades. A Chief Financial Officer who has an accounting and finance background to help the organization make profitable decisions. A Chief Operations Officer who focuses on making sure the business operates based on the executive team’s plan. Depending on the decisions being made, legal counsel may be present. All these backgrounds are necessary to make good decisions, but where is the person who understands how the technology is developed and implemented to help guide the decisions? You can ask for information after the fact, but if the CIO is helping guiding decision making, better timelines, budgets, and results will occur because the technology aspect is being considered before communicating to the rest of the team.
A CIO increases or implements a continuous improvement mindset in the organization due to the continually advancing nature of technology
Companies are continually looking for ways to increase their competitive advantage. This normally means a combination of better data, better skills sets, and capitalising on opportunities quickly while mitigating risks. When your company does all this well, it tends to be rewarded with higher revenue and margins. Technology can and should play a major part in this.
Better Data
Capabilities are continually expanding giving us more and more data, but without the right filters in place to analyse it, the data can be overwhelming. Only collecting what you need to make decisions is critical to this. The CIO will have more knowledge of what is already being measured and how it can be used to give new insights.
Better Skill Sets
Online learning makes it easier to acquire new skills when your employees have extra time. Including this in your planning will decrease business interruptions and still get information to the employees that implement the business strategy. This also lets you see who is hungry and where they want to go if they are taking courses that are not mandatory.
Capitalising on Opportunities
This comes right back to collecting data. Machines can catch trends before people do. Given the CIO is working with people every day to have better, more usable information, he can bring new opportunities to the table and suggest ways to implement them quickly with existing technology.
Mitigating Risks
Risks are the flipside of opportunities. Plenty of ventures failed because they came too early or a competitor beat them to the opportunity. Remember Sony Minidiscs? They were amazing for music lovers! They could hold 10x as much music as a CD, couldn’t get scratched easily, and took up less space, but they never caught on because of their timing. Five years later they were replaced by MP3 players, then mobile phones that could store or stream your favorite music.
Would this have evolved differently if they had released MiniDiscs before CD’s?
Who knows?
I’m certain that if a CIO had been in the meetings about that product initiative, they would have pointed out the speed in which the size of hard drives were storing more and more data in smaller spaces. Maybe if they had not wasted time on MiniDiscs everyone would be carrying around Sony Phones instead of Apple or Samsung phones.
The CIO can impact the company and how it thinks about improvements because of the IT background. A CIO is used to working in a fast-paced environment where upgrades are constantly being made. Having the executive offices tapped into this mentality will help them bring a continuous improvement culture to the lower levels in the company. For those who enjoy continuous improvement, it will create a more exciting workplace.
A CIO increases data analysis opportunities to be used across business units because the IT department has a better understanding of the corporate strategy.
Up to this point, I’ve been discussing the inputs that a CIO can bring to the executive offices, but the CIO will also take away information that helps the organization. When a CIO is involved in the broad-based talks about corporate strategy and direction, their creativity and imagination will get stimulated by the possibilities for business units to benefit more from the IT department’s work. The CIO having more insight, makes it where all your employees can have more insight. With understanding, commitment, and the right tools, this is a great way to increase work place productivity.
While many organizations will have people within their organization who can fulfill this role, some of you may not feel you have a viable candidate. For those who don’t, I’m happy to play the role. With over 10 years of experience managing software development projects for some of the largest financial institutions in the world, I bring acknowledge and expertise to the table that will help your organization grow. To learn more about our team augmentation, schedule a call here.
