The changing role of IT
Time to make a choice.
A significant portion of corporate budgets go to IT, yet many CEOs are unclear about the value they get for the money spent. Questions remain why IT spending must be so high, why it must rise year on year or why it takes such a long time to implement new functionality - and why this functionality often misses the “business point” it was supposed to address.
As a result, IT leaders are being asked to reduce costs by a degree that cannot be easily achieved without fundamentally rethinking the organization.
To move out of this difficult situation, CIOs and IT leaders need to expand their role beyond the traditional confines of traditional IT management duties. Instead, they should become true business leaders who understand technology but also know how to make the rest of the organization look at IT for the opportunity that it brings rather than the cost it represents.
In short, CIOs need to focus on:
• integrating/aligning IT within the company's business strategy
• establishing the IT organization as a business partner focused on maximising business return from IT.
Yet even more importantly than the above, it is about “hardwiring” the capability for the IT department to continuously deliver to the business what it needs (beyond servers and software).
