Today, Chief Information Officers must make a choice: become a business-focused partner on their company’s leadership team or stay in the background and manage the outsourcing of IT.
Becoming part of the Big Picture
CIOs and IT leaders need to expand their role beyond traditional IT management duties. They need to become true business leaders.
They need to know how to make the rest of the organization look at IT for the opportunity it brings, rather than the cost it represents.
To play a larger role in corporate strategy, CIOs and IT leaders need to help the organization determine how it can use IT to:
- Enhance product offering and competitive positioning
- Secure on-time and in-budget delivery
- Preserve product time-to-market and profitability
- Develop the flexibility needed to ensure fast response to new business opportunities or changing market conditions
In short, that means that it leaders need to focus on:
- Integrating IT within the company’s business strategy
- Making the IT organization a business partner
- Focus on maximizing business return from IT
