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The CIO as a business enabler

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DQINDIA Online
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By Samir Khare  , CIO, Fullerton India

The role of the IT organization in most companies and especially in the banking and financial services sector has evolved rapidly over the past decade. The expectations from an IT manager in organizations are much more than just keeping the ‘lights on’ or business-as-usual support. This evolution is directly correlated to the rapid advancement in information and communication technologies, along with the fact that technology-enabled services have permeated into every aspect of running a business. To add to this, exposure to new-age concepts of enterprise technology is not restricted to just IT professionals, often resulting in senior level strategy conversations on possible use of IT concepts within the organization which are unfortunately based on superficial understanding. In the absence of a clearly defined and stated strategy, this can result in multiple interpretations of the stated need of the business manager, which leads to solutions which do not stack up to the overall business objectives. The end result is that money invested in change management related to strategic innovations does not result in actual end-user adoption of the solution provided.

BUILDING A BUSINESS-CENTRIC MINDSET

This rapid pace of change and the increasing pull to innovate and support business growth are the key challenges that an IT organization needs to overcome. The solution lies in moving the IT organization from an operations-centric mindset to a business-centric mindset. This mindset change is easier said than done considering that the need to innovate will always be in addition to managing the existing IT architecture and priorities on a day-to-day basis in a cost-effective manner.

As a CIO, to deep dive into driving this mindset change, the key task involved is to answer the following questions about the perceived role of the IT organization within the overall enterprise. „„Is the IT organization perceived as a service provider for getting requirements for and executing the changes or as a subject matter expert on the technology innovations which can be modelled to suit the business services and growth? Is there a need to rebuild credibility of the IT organization as people who understand the core business of the enterprise? If the IT organization is perceived as people who understand the core business objectives and are subject matter experts on technology innovations, then the CIO is already a long way on the path to becoming a partner to the business growth.

However, if on the flip side, the perception is of a service provider, then the CIO has to ensure that the IT organization transitions to being a strategic business partner.

TURNING IT INTO A STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

One of the ways of doing this is to define the directional vectors for the IT team on the basis of some of the below mentioned tenets:

„„Move from a cost center approach and focus on enterprise revenue and profit. Build a five-year P&L impact statement for all major expenses in addition to just tracking for a TCO or RoI statements.

„„Evolve from being subject matter experts on technology to being knowledgeable about the products and services that are offered by the enterprise to the end customers. Seeding the IT team into the business units for short stints or getting business experts into the IT organization is usually a good solution. „„Move from servicing stated business requirements to providing solutions which keep in mind the end-customers and markets’ expectations.

„„Monitoring end-to-end usage of the solution as compared to just monitoring project timelines on requirements, testing, and delivery. Getting a strong metrics model to measure the success of a program as compared to defining success by on-time implementation.

„„Designing or building IT solutions architecture which is effective, flexible, and agile as compared to designing just for robustness based on a 5-to-6 year plan. Focus should be on an optimal mix of solutions which are based on an opex model or cloud-based solutions to manage scalability in a short period of time. What should help the CIO drive this move to making IT a strategic business partner is that often the IT analysts know more about the business process from an end-toend perspective (manual plus automated) as compared to any other function. The lacking part usually is just sharing this knowledge in a structured manner within the entire IT organization!

Another key factor is the issue with organizational readiness as an obstacle to innovation. Ageing infrastructure, legacy solutions, lack of specific skills or training within the enterprise are some of the examples that a CIO has to be ready to resolve and create a strong foundation for the leap towards innovation. One of the approaches to resolve such obstacles can be to have a very clear strategic roadmap to centralize and/or standardize the elements of the IT solutions and platforms and then pursue business innovations based on areas where existing platforms cannot be leveraged.

A strong business partnership where the technology team is a strategic partner in the overall growth of the enterprise, resulting in value to the end customers, stakeholders, and the employees is the emerging definition of the CIO’s role. Moreover, apart from being committed to the enterprises’ goals, the CIO needs to be clear about what the IT organization can deliver and be ready to share the accountability in delivering business goals. This clearly defines the CIO’s arrival as a strategic partner to the business team.

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