Relevance of the CIO

I thought my first post would be more formal, with an introduction (of myself, who else!), but then I'd like this blog to be a little more meaningful than that!

If it's useful, and is being attended to on a regular basis, that's good enough!

Talking business now: It's been three months since I joined IBM in sales, and I've been pretty disheartened with my limited exposure to the world of the CIO. Here's why:

• The CIO (at least the ones I've seen until now) don't really seem to understand the businesses they work for. My reasoning is that IT in such organizations is used only for mundane things like ensuring that certain basic apps are always up and running. How much of 'business understanding' does one need for that?!
• The CIO (again, only the ones I've seen!) does not seem to have too many technology initiatives for the company. Again, I feel that if you don't undersand what business you're in, what IT initiatives are you going to push for?? One obviously does not have too many ideas on how one can help the business technologically in such a scenario.

So I guess the onus lies on salespersons (and others who belive technology can be pretty damn useful for business) to get the CIO to think a little different.

Here's an article from set of BusinessWeek articles on the relevance of the CIO.

Excerpts:

CIOs that turn in solid results get asked to join CEOs in mapping out corporate strategy and entrusted to manage projects outside of IT.

CEOs are recognizing that, of all the levers they have to implement their strategy, technology can push all those levers. You want to change the sales force? Part of that change revolves around technology. You want to change the supply chain, how much inventory you need to have? That has a technology component as well.

We see CIOs' credibility with CEOs being driven by two factors: One, by how well the CIO runs IT -- are they managing their resources responsibly? Are they providing quality services? Two, by how well IT helps the business to achieve its goals.

On a basic level, is IT meeting its current obligations, such as providing services to users? Then, does the CIO understand the company's strategic direction and are decisions made that support it, as opposed to just making decisions that support IT?

High-credibility CIOs come with a business solution to a problem and a couple of technology options to solve it. Then they enter into a dialogue with the CEO about how to solve the business problem.

One example: IT departments are, generally, pretty good at managing their suppliers, whereas a lot of other parts of the organization don't manage their vendors well. So we've seen CIOs starting to get responsibilities for managing vendors and managing alliances outside of IT. We've also seen CIOs that are good at project management being given responsibility to manage product launches.