Perspectives & Strategy

I am always interested in how other IT leaders approach challenges. Information Week edition May 25th had an article on the ‘Global CIO Fifty’ that allowed me look at their approaches. I would welcome your comments in this area as well.

The need to spend less is almost global. Some of the other priorities include:

* improving customer facing capabilities.

* improvements in communications through corporate teams.

* improving business value.

I was interested to see that Kim Tae Keuk of LG Electronics talks about knowledge and insight being high value. Competency in collaborative planning and forecasting being a key corporate asset. He held a different view to many of the other CIOs featured, who were generally too focused on operational issues. Maybe that has come about because he started with improving corporate business processes in which he had a consulting background.

David Briskman also viewed BI as a vital contributor for business change along with accelerating products to market and supply chain excellence. He has also responded to the challenge of centralising his team.

Issues such as responding and complying to industry standards were important to many.

I was surprised how many IT leaders are focused on purely operational issues. To me this does not contribute to corporate growth, which will be at the forefront of the mind of the average board member today. I will echo some words from an earlier article (See ,Deploying Solutions on a Shoestring Budget and Do IT Teams Need to be More Business Savvy?). I firmly believe that IT’s value should be measured by the extent to which Information Services can contribute to business growth. Having a purely operational focus does not add value to the corporation, except with one or two exceptions

One operational focus area that many corporations have as an outstanding challenge is application consolidation. I had talked earlier this year to a few IT leaders who estimated that they had in excess of 1500 corporate applications in their organisation. Daniel Lebeau of GSK focuses on the importance of adopting uniform solutions across the globe. I would agree that such effort can save money on the bottom line, even where considerable data consolidation effort is required.

We all know that web 2.0 is an important part of the corporate future. Video and enterprise Social Networks are arguably here to stay. That said someone asked the question only recently about whether Social Media is just a passing fad. Even if it is can corporations afford to pass is by? I think not. To me loyalty in our youth will come from the impact they have in the Social Media. People who help them will remain close to their hearts. Social Media, unlike any that has gone before is very much a two-way street.

This is a discussion that need to be aired in the industry and I would like to hear from you my loyal readers in this regard.