What the CEO expects from his CIO

News categories: e-commerce, digitizing the New Economy enterprise / Information Technology

A survey conducted among 400 CEOs in 11 countries by COMPASS in partnership with the London Business School revealed that CEO’s today, challenged with a highly dynamic New Economy, expect from their CIO’s to:

· provide systems to support business strategy

· keep users and mangers satisfied to support business strategy

· run an economical IT operation

· built a sound IT infrastructure

· introduce new relevant technologies

· educate the CEO on IT trends

The relatively high proportion of neutral responses to CIO involvement in strategic tasks – such as transforming the business through IT (30%) or contributing to the business (34%) - suggests that some CEOs aren’t quite sure that the CIO belongs in the boardroom. One executive put it: “Most current IT personnel are more attuned to the care and feeding of their mainframe mindset that to the needs of business and its relationship requirements with customers”.

According to the survey, the customer relationship comes first for most CEOs. Second comes rapid exploitation of new technology and improving supply chain management – but driven from the customer and market point of view. For most CEOs therefore the objectives of going “E” (E-Commerce, E-Business) are mainly:

· Access to new customers

· Improved supply chain efficiency

· More business from existing customers

· Retention of existing customers and

· Better management of information and knowledge

So for most CEOs the business exploitation of E-Commerce and E—Business will continue to focus on strategic issues such as access to customers, retention of existing customers, knowledge management (which is a key value driver in the knowledge based intangible economy), and internal and external communication. No wonder that they are sceptical in front of IT executives who are more interested in the technology itself than into how it can contribute to the company’s business strategy. Conversely, a “Business CIO”, a CIO who really thinks in business strategy and how he can contribute with his function to extend the companies customer reach, can be of inestimable value for his company. As such “Business CIOs” will emerge more and more in the future, this will also change the perception of many corporate executives of IT as a pure back office function and will transform the role of the CIO into an agent of change and contributor to business strategy making.

More about about New Economy Economics and Management Best Practice in general, and about other related topics will be continued here in my newsletters. To subscribe for my free-of-charge e-mail push newsletter click here.

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