Innovation or cost management?

CIOs often complain about the budgetary pressure they face to do more with less.

Some even lament that they would much rather be focusing on more strategic matters such as tech-driven business innovation.

The reality is that these are not mutually exclusive. In fact CIOs would be wise to apply their innovation skills to driving cost out of their function as a priority.

This would serve as a good example to make the case for driving costs out of the wider business.

Smart CIOs might even do a deal to take a percentage of the associated savings to fund their business innovation centre. Now that would indeed be strategically important.