Perspectives & Strategy

There are always surveys being provided that deliver their own view of what the average CIO needs to deliver to the business community today. I am sure that like me you have cursed when filling out surveys, because they seem completely miss the point (or at the very least do not include your main pain-point right now).

The results of a recent survey (by Channel Insider) indicated the top priorities as:

1- Hosted/Outsourced Infrastructure
2- Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
3- Business Application Services
4- Software Development Services
5- Management and Monitoring
6- Network and PC Management and Monitoring
7- Security Services
8-  Strategy and Advisory Services
9- Project Management

and 63% of CIOs are willing to spend for critical technologies.

I am not saying that these are not important priorities, in their own way they are, but I would not list them with the same priority and there are some key items missing. I guess this relates to the specific survey and what it aims to show. The cynic in me also says that any survey will also favour a sponsor’s product of technology area – One thing I do not have to worry about.  It is undoubtedly true that there are some CIOs that were born and bred in the support function of IT and they will think more about the issues associated with keeping the lights on than the benefits that IT can provide the business. Perhaps also my background in Corporate Solutions, Business Intelligence and Strategic Thinking also taints my viewpoint here.

In my experience each IT Leader will have their priorities dictated to them by the company which they work for, but spending is always required. Most of the items listed by Channel Insider tend to look at the operational side of the business. But I think that there is one major question that needs to be asked of IT, which is “How can IT improve business results or reduce costs?” This question does not seem to have been addressed here.

There are cost savings to be made on the operational side of the business through leveraging our existing architecture to the maximum extent, e.g. virtualization. Improvements in security, particularly for those businesses in the retail sector are always important.

Some things I did not see in this survey (in no particular order) are:

◊ OpenSource
◊ Web 2.0 & collaboration
◊ Statutory Compliance
◊ Audit requirements
◊ Adoption/Extension of Best Practices
◊ Business Intelligence

In my straw poll on this subject, conducted with IT Leaders in my network, “Business Intelligence” ranked number 1 – by a long way. from a corporate application perspective CRM solutions become the next priority as that allow us to better understand our customer and look at service improvements.

CRM of course has a natural linkage to Business Intelligence with questions like – what are our most profitable customers? This naturally forms part of a value chain that links BI with market knowledge and a greater business understanding and ultimately contributes to improvements in business results.

The moral of the story is that you have to identify your own corporate priorities and act on those.