EuroCIO
I recently delivered the opening keynote of EuroCIO in Geneva. The target group is the CIOs of the top 500 European companies. So it was an excellent environment in which to get a barameter check on CIO thinking.
Some of the emerging themes:
- It's all about cost reduction and delivering a quick return on investment
- The role of the end user CIO is changing as the technology industry changes
- IT talent management is a real challenge both from a quality and quantity perspective
- Cloud computing cannot be ignored, but there are issues to be resolved such as defining appropriate service level agreements
- Green IT is good but IT for green is better
- IT governance is more important than ever.
All food for thought. My concern for the IT industry is that the current economic conditions will cause CIOs to focus purely on technology efficiency as part of the drive down costs boardroom edict. We need strong CIOs to explain that IT has the power to drive down business costs and thus should have its budget increased in economic downturns.
Any thoughts?
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I totally agree with your perspective and I believe your insights into IT and the perspective of IT is indeed very thoughtful. I wrote about this yesterday in my webpage and this is what I thought about some of the themes:
“The role of the end user is changing as the technology industry changes”
The role of the end user in any organization has become a lot more diversified with the emergence of technology. From the division of labour model where each user or specialist in an organization did specific tasks are now getting more and more consolidated and users are doing more and more tasks as technology is enabling them to do so. Typical examples can be obtained in a bank, where initially there was a teller for cheques, a person for Demand Drafts, a person doing wired transfers to now three people doing all three. They all access the same systems online and the technical knowhow required to perform all these actions are greatly reduced. All checks and limitations are all handled by the software, so the user needs to know only how to use it. This specific case of how the role of end users are changing needs to be understood and processes for users of the organization can be greatly simplified while doing a change management or a strategic restructuring.
“IT talent management is a real challenge both from a quality and quantity perspective”
IT talent management is important and should mean different things to different companies depending on the nature of their jobs. For companies with key IT teams (for instance banks or manufacturing industries with ERP systems) it is important that the key talent of the company remains with them. You can always differentiate your IT staff that does qualitative work, as well as staff that does manual repetitive work. This is where quantitative v/s qualitative would come into the picture. For repetitive work, you do not need specialized staff, these staff can be trained and be brought up to task within a very short span of time. This is the typical kind of staff that can and in my opinion must be outsourced. The other staff whose knowledge in the system is critical to your IT survival must be retained at all costs and must always be a part of your IT team rather than being outsourced.
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Interesting insights Abdul. Thank you.
This will get more difficult as society demands that people work later into their lives. We will then be faced with a workplace made up of people with different expectations and skills (Baby Boomers, Gen X and Y).
Very soon we will be faced with more ‘tech savants’ outside the IT function than within. This will put inordinate pressure on the CIO as for the first time they will have a ‘knowledgeable customer’
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