Are you an IT Savvy Business Leader?

Most of the time we hear of Business Savvy CIOs and there is much written about how and what a CIO should do to understand the business needs and how much the CIO align IT to business needs. There is much discussion on how a CIO should run "IT as a business".

But have we ever heard of there is need to a "IT Savvy Business Leader"? Perhaps not, because a IT Savvy Business Leader is a rare commodity. Of course, Business Leaders / CEOs are primarily responsible for business strategy and business growth... why should they bother about IT? What do they gain from being IT Savvy?

Well... firstly let us attempt to define what is a "IT Savvy Business Leader"? There is no definition in technical terms but in a very broad sense it means - a business leader who communicates the organization vision which affords and defines a central role to leveraging IT for value creation; business leaders who engage themselves in strategic IT decisions and who insist that their top management does as well. IT Savvy Business Leaders construct an equal partnership between business and IT and through such a partnership achieve superior results for themselves, their team and the organization.

It is important to realize that most of the time the blame for deficiencies for leveraging IT investments is on the CIO, but I believe that the business people should be equally blamed for their failure in their role to own and to extract value from IT investments and leverage technology. I have seen business people discounting and disowning IT systems and procedures even before the blueprint is put down on paper and before it is approved by the senior management / board; I have seen business people forming their perspectives around technology beforehand itself. I believe that such a lack of IT Savvy Business people leads to underperforming IT assets.

In fact, there needs to be a realization and acceptance to the fact that in the last three decades, IT have moved from being the back-office function to a front-office function, from the bottom level of the firm (remember, the good old "EDP" days) to the board of directors and from physically massive objects to small-form devices with enormous power that can be carried around in a pocket  and can extend and connect you to anyone, anyplace, anytime and anywhere in a matter of split second. Today's integrated and global platforms have the ability and capability to run complex processes and are in contrast to the stand-alone systems with limited functionality.

Because of the above, business leaders get drawn into decisions that were purely considered technical in nature. Irrespective of their understanding on technology, today, business leaders have to think and expand their business horizons to include decision-making on IT investments. With the advent of evolution in technology and its new forms and opportunities - Cloud Computing, Mobility, Social media and Big Data, the "Business-IT relationship" has been undergoing a change and business leaders have to take the same into account and factor it in their decision making processes. There is a need for business leaders develop their organization architecture to guide IT decision making, a need to directly relate business performance to leveraging IT effectively i.e. to becoming a IT Savvy Business person.

IT Saavy means the mind-set and capability to see the world through "digital" lens; it is all about a behaviour, a thought-process. IT Savvy Business Leader directly engages in IT decision making, assume responsibility for extracting value from IT investments, encouraging others to use and understand technologies that underpin their business responsibilities, engage in cross-enterprise IT innovation. It is NOT about building IT but about bringing IT closer into the activities of the business on an everyday basis through personal involvement and not delegation. IT Savvy is definitely is NOT about "use of IT" and technology devices.

Here is a kind of yardstick (of  course, one can add to this list) against which one can measure if one is a IT Savvy Business Leader or otherwise -

• Do you establish business targets with IT capability in your company strategic plans?
• Does Management Job Performance and Evaluation in your company / department include accountability for performance of IT Investments
• Have you put in place Rewards and Incentives that promote information and systems sharing?
• Do you share data, information and knowledge with your peers and colleagues? Do you promote the sharing of the same?
• Do you encourage innovative use of IT in your department / company?
• Do you help create and ensure that the information systems and information resources are accurate, reliable, relevant, accessible and shareable?

Just a new one I heard - CEO Disease. Have you got it?

Wow!! It is good to be back. It is been four months since I last wrote something. But these four months have been pretty dramatic in my life - lost my dear dad to cancer, have a new job and am in a distant relationship (do not worry folks.. still married and faithful to my lovely wife) I just work in a different town now and she just stayed back home taking care of our boys...

Well... in these last four months I have been thinking and doing a sort of retrospection on why and what was it that made me change a job every time I did it... What answers did I give during the interview to the typical interview question - Why are you looking for a change?

And I came up with these few standard answers that we all may give or may have given during that job change interview (depending at what stage of your career one is)...

• I am moving for a better opportunity
• I am looking for a challenging and rewarding assignment
• I am looking for a challenging, fulfilling and satisfacting assignement wherein I could contribute more to the business
• I wanted to be an entrepreneur

and the list can go on depending how innovative one is in coming up with something better... 

Well... here is one that I heard about recently... a person let go a job because his / her boss suffered from the "CEO Disease". Wow!! "CEO Disease"... now what's that?

Well... "CEO Disease"... as the literature defines it is - 

A behavior pattern that has been observed among Chief Executive Officers (CEO) who become intoxicated with power and perks of office. Symptoms include believing in their own omnipotence, surrounding themselves with yes-men and responding brutally to any opposition. (http://www.termwiki.com/EN:CEO_disease)

This behavior pattern (again as available literature on the subject says) could be but not limited to -

• treating the company as his / her private fiefdom
• believing that the s/he and the company is one and hence can take what s/he wants and when s/he wants

More importantly, the question is - How does one tell if one is suffering from it or have early symptoms of the "CEO Disease". Well... here are some pointers to find out by taking a look at your own practices as an executive...

• Are you changing direction so very frequently that you seem to be driving your spouse, your colleagues, or your clients "up the wall"?
• Are you giving an impression to your colleagues that you can do no wrong, refusing to concede any mistake?
• Is the decision more important to you than the decision-making process and details?
• Do you like people who yes your every whim?
• Are you overly concerned where you sit in a meeting or expect people to rise when you enter a room?
• Do you relish media attention - not especially for the company but for personal gain?
• Do colleagues think that you treat practical concerns about stability, capacity, and leadership as signs of disloyalty, laziness, or the most deadly sin of all - technical and managerial ignorance?

Now... wait a minute.. can a CIO ever be infected with the "CEO Disease"? Well.. perhaps yes... in fact the "CEO Disease" can get to anyone.

Imagine... the result of a case of Top Management Executive suffering from a real "bad" infection of the "disease" on the overall company performance - the company turnover could tremble and go downhill and employee turnaround could soar, investors could get nervous, and sales may drop because the salespeople may end up not been sure what to sell. Project Management could stall and employees may have a glazed-look most of the time. It can get really worse if all the "vision-lacking" employees  are fired in the hope of getting "better" ones. More importantly, when the money would run out, the Top Management Executive believing in his / her "Midas Touch" could attempt to simply go out and get more millions taking the company in deeper and murky waters and towards a major financial crisis and even a complete closure of operations.

Imagine - what could happen if an company's problem is not a lack of vision but too much of it? what could happen when the vision changes monthly or even weekly?

Scary right? But, there is a cure and hope...

Though I am no expert on this, I believe that the cure is pretty simple and easy if, 

• you are willing to accept that you have a problem on hand, and
• you really want to do something about it and you really really mean to 

I believe it is important to create an environment of inclusive growth wherein the ideas and opinions and views of one's team members are sought for and the team members too feel confident and comfortable in sharing their views / concerns and giving their opinions. Ask questions - is there a better way to do it? how can it be handled differently? Get the team's buy in on your project / initiative. 

Secondly, learn to admit and fix your mistakes. This takes a lot of courage to do this. Remember, we do not live in a "perfect" world and most importantly, we are human beings and human beings are not "perfect". As the Hindu mythology tells us, if you are perfect you are GOD and invincible and human beings are not invincible. Learn to say - "I made a mistake and I was wrong".  

Thirdly, please please for GODsake discourage those sycophants who try to "suck up" to every word you say, who make you feel good with their seductive accolades. If you really want to make the difference - Fire the sycophants!!

Reward mistakes because at least the people tried to make a difference, help them understand and learn from the mistakes. They were different and may really have a genuine and possibly the "real" solution but may have failed because of other reasons. Encourage a culture of experimentation and continuous learning and innovation.

Communicate, communicate, communicate across reporting lines... Please remember as a Top Management Executive the information that you receive has been filtered and fine tuned multiple times by multiple people and subordinates. The ground reality may be quite different and all you have is the filtered information and not the really "juice". It really helps to have your ear to the ground.
  
Lastly, respect your people. Every person of the team has a role to play and the corporate engine works smoothly, efficiently and effectively when all - the BIG and SMALL pieces of the corporate structure work together and insync. Every person's role is important and needs to be respected for the role s/he plays.  

Is Cloud Computing a way out to strangle-hold on IT Budgets?

If you were to ask any CIO today to list out his / her priorities, the list could look something like this -

• been customer-centric and enhance customer experience
• a few experiments with mobility
• business process automation
• ensuring business continuity
• business intelligence applications
• IT Security

If one looks at the list above, it is very clear that CIOs are primarily looking at their so-called "traditional", "core" functions of  - automation, business continuity from the IT perspective and IT security as their priority. 

Today, majority of the IT functions continue to be performed in-house. The other reason for the list seems to be skewed towards the "traditional", "core" functions of the the IT department is because IT budgets are likely to remain consistent and no major budget increase is anticipated. This thought is further supported by the fact that overall there is a strangle-hold on any new investments made by the businesses due to the current uncertainties about policy and the regulatory environment and rising costs. So, it is all about "keeping the lights on". There is no money for the CIOs to "play" with newer technologies.

So what is the way out?

The "traditional", "core" functions are already optimized by the CIOs, but still are on the list up here. So, what is that a CIO could be thinking in here? Well... perhaps - look at new and emerging technologies which help reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) and improving the turnaround time (TAT). Well... there is cloud computing that the CIO can tap into.

But how... 

Well... as a CIO with stagnated budgets, one could look at moving the data centre infrastructure on the cloud and availing of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) from one of the cloud service providers. What the possible IaaS will do is - help replace the data centre infrastructure, it can help create that much needed disaster recovery (DR) site strategy to ensure business continuity using at a much cheaper cost than otherwise. The IaaS will allow, the CIO, an ability to be quickly provision servers and all necessary infrastructure for different projects and applications. IaaS could be a good model for hosting web services based applications and applications that require a quick increase in infrastructure availability. The IaaS facilitates further cost savings in terms of amount of power consumed and in terms of time and efforts for server provisioning. 

courtesy: cioresearchcenter.com

Also, a CIO could consider the platform as a service (PaaS) as a great model wherein the management of the infrastructure becomes the job of the cloud service provider and could free the in-house IT team to focus of building solutions that can help transform the business, focus on customer-centric business solutions and enhance the overall customer experience. This will help the CIO bring in a business focus to the IT function and an opportunity to work along with the CEO / COO and other senior management team on the "real" and "burning" business concerns and issues.

Another alternative and most commonly used model for cloud computing initiatives is - software as a service (SaaS). The CIO could deploy his / her business critical applications on the cloud or use off-shelf business applications. Whilst doing so, it is important to take a cautious approach and the CIO would have to consider aspects such as performance experiences and do a detailed cost analysis with comparative sheets for the future plans. This is a model wherein the CIO can save not only on infrastructure but also software application licenses and move to a "pay-per-use" model. So, in this manner, a  CIO could provide the business with much needed solutions on a OPEX model and save the business big money in CAPEX and lower the turnaround time (TAT) considerable.

However... there is no "one size fits all" in here. So what model do I use for my business? How do I figure it out?

As a CIO, it is important that I understand my infrastructure and business application footprint and then adapt and use the various models and options available. This will allows the CIO to effectively shift and reduce the up-front CAPEX expenses in the IT Budget and spread the costs over a longer period using a OPEX model and still be able to satisfy and meet the business needs of solutions from IT. Some business benefits of cloud computing initiatives that CIOs can use to convince  the CEO / COO and the other senior management team could be -

• Shifts fixed to variable cost model (CFOs would love this)
• "pay-per-use", "scale-up when needed", 'try before use" models possible (CFOs would love this too)
• Provides flexible cost-effective computing to support growth (COOs and CFOs love this)
• Enables faster "go-to market" strategy (the CMO and Sales folks will love it)
• Support experimentation
• Drives new potential businesses
• Can enable user-defined experiences

Of course... the CIO will need to detail out the "real" business cost savings and monetize the benefits before putting it to the CEO / COO and the other senior management team.

Great... but what about IT Security on the Cloud? Is it not something the CIO should be worried about? What happens to my data on a "public" cloud because a cloud service provider has so many customers and may also have customers who are in similar line of business as mine. One needs to understand that the cloud computing infrastructure is not fundamentally insecure, it needs to be managed and accessed in a secure way. There are ways - data encryption techniques, designing and defining mitigating controls, cloud authentication and authorization solutions that one can use to ensure that the data on the cloud infrastructure is secure and safe. Most critical is to - protect the API keys.

So.... is there merit for a CIO to look at cloud computing in these times of strangled-held IT budgets? With all its worth, I strongly believe that it is an option that the CIO should look at and if planned and executed well it has considerable business benefits and also impacts the way the business is done - it facilitates the customer involvement in what kind of a product the customer will like to see and use. Also, yes... it is very much doable with the support to the CEO / COO and the other senior management team. It is important that the CEO / COO and the senior management team understand that it can be done and invite the CIO to the "strategy table" and share the business issues and concerns with the CIO. They need to give the CIO opportunity to find a solution to the business issues and concerns, give the CIO an opportunity to innovate and experiment (of course within the defined IT budget) and to optimize and cost savings for the business. 

"Business Anemia" - a wake up call

One of the favorite topic of discussion in the business world today is - the state of the business environment at length - the global and the Indian economies? Everybody has their own perspective about it, everybody has opinions / suggestions on what needs to be done to set it right.

In short, we all try to find a scapegoat and what we do about it in most cases - nothing really, nothing different and life goes on.

But, personally, I have a different perspective on this. I believe it is, in fact, a wake-up call. This is an opportunity - opportunity for CEOs / COOs  to think differently. It is opportunity for the CEOs / COOs to rope in their CIOs and work and partner with them to bring in the much needed efficiency and the effectiveness in business processes, to automate business processes, to deploy solutions that are customer-centric. It is an opportunity to look at each and every function very closely and jointly work with their CIOs to identify the problem areas, work on them, put in technology solutions to improve and overcome the problem areas and iron them out permanently forever. 

The CEOs / COOs need to understand that their CIOs with their business acumen and understanding of the business processes as a result of all the technology interventions - ERP and CRM solutions, are the most apt and best suited for bringing about this change. The CEOs / COOs need to realize that a CIO can take a complete fresh look and new perspective at areas of operations wherein the CIO can actually drive down or even drive out the cost and deliver better service to the "real" customer. The CEOs / COOs need to realise that their CIO is the best partner to work with ironing out inefficient and ineffective business processes and hence prepare the business for the next wave of improved business sentiments resulting in better business performance, to transform the business to grow to greater heights in the future.

Furthermore, the CEOs / COOs need to understand and respect that with all theirs and every other business function and all the employees depends on technology thus the IT function has today become the "bloodline" the business. If you cut down on this "bloodline" or decide to reduce the "blood" that runs through the veins and arteries of your business, it will lead to a "business anemia". By reducing the "blood", the CEOs and COOs are in fact killing their own businesses. The CEOs / COOs need to understand that if the businesses dies, they die with it too. In these times of desperation, the most common mistake most CEOs / COOs make is - pump in more money in sales and marketing, into increase production capacity without really ironing out inefficient and ineffective business processes.  

Well... it can be argued that pumping money into a marketing campaigns, announcing sales incentives, bidding for more business, building larger capacities will bring in "instant", "quick"   returns and "makeshift" changes. True... but just pause in here for a second... how long can the business sustain it all with inefficient and ineffective business processes and people?  "Instant", "quick" returns and "makeshift" changes do not last long if the core problems are not resloved. The CEOs / COOs need to realize that they have to treat the disease to the core, they need to eradicate the disease, prevent it from reoccurrence because everytime it reoccurs, the disease drains away vital energy, resources and money from their businesses. Attack the root-cause of inefficient and ineffective business processes, of people through use of technology, transform the business because in the long-run that is perhaps the ONLY solution to all problems, the ONLY solution for sustenance of the business.

It can be argued that - technology is not the solution to all business problems. Very true... and that is not what I am even trying to prompt. All I am saying is - by the virtue that the CIO understands the business processes because of the numerous technology interventions in the business such as - ERP and CRM projects, because of the documentation of the "as-on" business processes and is also an senior management executive, the CEOs / COOs can seek and partner with the CIO to set the things right at least as far as the business processes are concerned. Furthermore, it is a believed that technology intervention do bring in efficiency  in the business. So, I would like to urge the CEOs / COOs to give the CIO a chance, bring him / her into the mainstream of business (if not already) decisions, partner with the CIO and transform the business to ensure long-term sustainability for your business.   

There is a very famous hearsay or story, I am not too sure, on this and it goes like this - an major Indian automotive company was struggling and that particular year did not make large profits, but the top man of the company decided to invest most of the profits of that year in improving the business processes and bringing in efficiency and effectiveness by streamling business processes and bringing about a transformation through technology and today that automotive company is a major and leading business conglomerate. It was the foresight of this business leader who attacked the root cause, invested in technology to bring about the transformation of the business for long term sustenance rather than investing in efforts that gave "quick", "instant" returns and "makeshift" changes. 

Would I like to be a COO? Sure... why not?

I asked myself a question - Why can I not be a COO? 

This further raised a plethora of related questions -  How am I different? Am I not expected to have all the traits as any category "C" business executive? Am I not considered to be a business executive? Am I not expected to understand and contribute to the business? Am I not held responsible for the business outcome? So... how am I any different than any other category "C" business executive? Why am I treated differently?  

Well... today, as a CIO, I am expected to run IT as a Business and NOT Cost Center. I am suppose to charge back for all IT Services and Systems to end users / verticals / business units across the organization. I am suppose to convince ("sell") the IT Services charge back. Run it (IT) as a Business... I am told. 

If I run IT as a "business" with defined Service Level Agreement (SLAs) with my users, rather let us call them customers; if I classify my customers as "Class A", "Class B" and likewise and define the response time and issue resolution time based on the customer class; if I measure, monitor and publish the SLA performance on a routine basis (very similar to the quarterly results that the COO is responsible to delivery), also measure and monitor the performance of the other components of the "business" - networks availability, server availability, minimize unplanned downtime and maximize uptime; if I provide solutions and services (applications and infrastructure) to my customers to satisfy their need to carry out their businesses effective and efficiently (again very similar to the COO); if I am expected to respond to the changing needs of my customers (well the customers call it business changes, another similarity to the COO / CEO's role) and for me "change" in constant then am also I not playing the role of a Chief Operating Officer (COO) or maybe even a Chief Executive Officer (CEO)? 

Am I not responsible for the IT Business in the similar manner as the CEO is responsible for the success and failure of the organization as per the expectations set by the board of directors. Am I not the CEO of the IT Business though it is internal in nature?

Well... one can argue.. - but then I do not have the "feel" of the "real" customer of the organization. Well... do all the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) have that exposure to the "real" customer of the organization, perhaps not everybody, but the number of CFOs promoted to COOs and CEOs is much more, is it not? Of course....the COOs and CEOs themselves "acquire" the requisite  understanding / knowledge over a period of time and so would the CFO, right? Then why not the CIO too can acquire the same knowledge domain?

It is an accepted business truth today that, IT is expected to be more receptive to changes than others parts of the organization. Now this exactly works in the favor of the CIO,  this orientation toward change allows a CIO to take a complete fresh look and new perspective at areas of operations wherein  the CIO can actually drive down or even drive out the cost and deliver better service to the "real" customer. Also, is the CIO not expected to "document" all the "as-is" and "expected-to-be" business processes in the organization?

The fact is - with the cloud computing and mobility and all the consumer technology, technology will continue to move to center stage. Furthermore... today with all the discussions / events / conferences around "BIG Data" and storage, database structure, data extracting tools which are beyond the available and traditional conventional database structure, the role of the CIO is expected become complex (traditional CIOs be happy that there CIO role is not going away), but for the more adventurous CIOs this an fantastic opportunity. The business needs - to  understand the real customer better, of extracting customer insights, of mapping the customer preferences, to be able to cross-sell and up-sell products and services, the need for effective, efficient and more importantly flexible business processes, can make the change. So, data is business and the key success factor for the business - about world-class internal and external processes, about customers, about employees.

So, why cannot the custodian of the data and this key success factor for the business have a shot at the COO role in an organization? It is only CIO who can deliver all of the above to the organization / management and board of directors. 

If the CIO is able to deliver the business results (the probability of doing so is the same for any other  category "C" executive) then I, the CIO, deserve to be given a chance. So... it is time to change, change this time in the attitude and approach by the management / board of directors at looking at the CIO role. There is no point in just saying as most management do - "change is a ONLY constant".

Then where is the problem? Well... the problem is - CIOs simply do not volunteer to take over additional responsibility, additional roles in the organization. Now, is it the fear of rejection or is it the fear of been the "first" of the CIO kind to ask for it or is just the top management or the board of directors's perspective that it is too silly for a CIO to even make an attempt at ask to be a COO?

Would I like be a COO? Sure.... why not? I am willing to take up the challenge and keep things running while realizing the vision for the future. The question is - would you like to give me a chance?

"Sucker" for HOT technologies?

Come January.... and every technology enterprise company, every CIO forum, every research agency associated with the IT World and even some CIO themselves start looking into their "crystal balls" and attempt to predict the technologies that will impact and change the way businesses is done in the coming year. Lets call them the "hot" technologies. Predictions are made on what are the "hot" technologies for the year, what should CIOs do about them, how should CIOs go about deploying these "hot" technologies in their businesses. And then there are CIO Round-table discussions seeking the CIO perspective and seeking the CIO "seal of validation" about these "hot" technologies. Finally, a consensus on the "hot" technologies for the year is arrived at.

Well... after all of the above and the euphoria around it even in 2013,  there seems to be a board consensus on the Top three (03) "new" and "hot" technologies for year 2013 amongst the CIO community at least here in India - 

• Big Data

• Cloud Computing

• Mobility

CIOs, the logical people they are, like clear, precise definitions, but "Big Data" is a relative concept. Also, it depends on who is defining it. On a very board conceptual front, "Big Data" collectively an be referred to as - 

"the strategy, business processes, tools and technologies that relate the datasets in an organization that are, in fact, beyond the ability of traditional database software tools in size and complexity when it comes to capturing, storing, managing and analyzing them." 

So, "Big Data" would mean different things to different vendors, CIOs and all those involved with it. In fact, the majority of the "Big Data" projects underway today are primarily in the space where a lot of customer-centric information is been collected through various individual and perhaps stand-alone systems. These datasets on their own may not help derive as much business benefits as if they all are looked at and analyzed together collectively. For example - inventory positions, truck delivery logos, RFID based product location, POS logs etc.  in case of a retail company or maybe - loyalty card database, customer visits to the company website, ticket booking and billing information for an airline company or holidays booked for a time-share company or even insurance policy buying. It can be even customer demographics,  buying transactions, GIS-based development patterns for an infrastructure company. In short, it is all about looking at all the diverse datapoints available in an enterprise which could be either - structured, non-structured or even semi-structured and then using tools and technologies on these datapoints to analyse them all and aid effective  "business decisions".

The next "hot" technology seems to be - "Cloud Computing". A few of my eminent CIOs friends would like to perhaps see 2013 as the "year of the Cloud".  "Easy provisioning", " easy manageability", "effective OPEX model", "dynamic resource availability" etc are typical points sighted when marketing the cloud and of course, all that is true. There have been great success stories around "cloud computing" technologies particularly in the SME community. Big enterprises with their heterogeneous and virtually environment seem to have adopted hybrid cloud solutions - maintaining their internal private clouds and deploying applications on an external public clouds. In my personal view, Cloud Computing has great potential from the disaster recovery (DR) perspective and with service offering like Amazon Glacier even with all its limitations there is potential. Data which if archival in nature and which requires to be stored and managed for various statutory requirements over a long period can definitely be a candidate for such a service. In the end, it is all about cheap and nearly limitless processing power and storage capacity. Cloud Computing is useful wherein the reach of the application needs to be maximized and available 24 by 7 and Cloud Computing coupled with Mobility Apps solutions will be the future of application delivery.

That brings us to the third of the Top three "hot" technologies of 2013 - "Mobility". There is a bit of a confusion when it comes to mobility... It seems to have many names - BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), Mobile Data Management (MDM), in fact, I once attended a seminar where in a technology enterprise classified secure VPN solution and security under mobility solutions. Well.... whatever be the case, the fact is that the cheap smartphones are here to stay, all consumer interactions are becoming mobile, even physical interactions are getting converted into digital signals and social networking is becoming a rage and reality. Businesses today cannot afford to ignore this trend. Mobility and mobile apps are been written and are fast entering the mainstream business processes and making the enterprise data available to a wider audience and also making it available "anytime anywhere". In fact, mobility is leading the consumerization of data and will be a major "disruptive" technology in years to come.

The newer technologies are great and they definitely help CIOs perform better. It is also true that these technologies are here to stand and they will impact businesses and business processes.  It is the CIOs' ability and imagination on how the use these technologies in their businesses that will determine their success. 

But before you jump in on that journey to success using these technologies, just a few pointers... 

• get on the bandwagon and initiate projects around the "hot" technologies ONLY when you think there is a "Business Case" for them in your business and not just because a peer CIO in a similar industry as yours is doing so;
• check, evaluate and retrospect the use in your business; 
• bounce off your ideas with peers in the CxO team within your enterprise and get a buy-in from them; 
• demonstrate the business value; 
• it has a better chance of success as a "business" project with a business sponsor rather than a "technology" project conceived by the CIO alone, and
• most important, remember - you need the budgets to deliver it all.

Are you a "Turnaround" CIO?

When I started to think about it all, I realize that everybody knows about a turnaround CEO. There are many successful turnaround CEOs and much is talked about them. It also is widely said and accepted that a turnaround CEO needs to have a clear action plan and goals, a realistic timeline, and support of the company's board and senior management team and all of this needs to be accomplished by financial results in terms of greater market share, larger profits and a higher stock price or perhaps all three. 

But then is there something as a turnaround CIO? If yes, how would you define a turnaround CIO? How is the turnaround CIO different than the traditional CIO? What are the expectations from the turnaround CIO? 

Sometimes in your career, you may have been lucky enough to replace a sitting CIO and given an mandate to fix something that is not right in the IT department or fix a business critical IT application or to fix that business impacting IT project. Now, in this situation the CIO is expected to turnaround and fix what is not right and also accomplish greater customer satisfaction whilst deliver more with less. If you are doing that or are mandated to do that then know for certain that you have now morphs into turnaround CIO. The mandate is simple - Fix It!! 

It is easy said than done, because as a CIO, one is typically used to:

• Running and Managing IT Efficiently and Effectively
• Managing CXO expectations
• Driving Innovation and Growth while managing costs 
• Proving the Strategic Value of IT
• Developing the next line of IT Leaders

As a turnaround CIO, one needs to do things additionally and differently. A turnaround CIO is well qualified and comes to the table with demonstrated skills and accomplishments. It is a clear different mind-set required to a turnaround CIO - a much more then what CIOs are traditionally use to. Additionally, the turnaround CIO needs to also look at what is available on the plate and then... 

• Identify a low-hanging but pain causing fruit and quickly fix it
• Identify what really drives the business and what the business needs are and focus on and align IT solutions to meet them first
• Choose the right, proven and best technologies that meets the business needs, solves an organizational problem quickly
• Concentrate on increasing Internal Customer Satisfaction
• Take a look at the IT Team and promote and keep these who can deliver the quick results, ease out the laggards

A turnaround CIO always needs to remember that then what s/he does not have is - time, because for an organization which is struggling, time is money. There is no room for errors and mistakes for a turnaround CIO and it is safe not to use experimental technologies and systems.  

Right... so you know it all, so what is the big deal? But have you thought about it in this matter... perhaps no, do you think and consider yourselves as turnaround CIO if this is exactly what you have done it before? Like there are CEOs and turnaround CEOs (so called "specialist problem fixers"), why can't here also be CIOs and turnaround CIOs? 

One thing is clear - irrespective to whether you are a traditional CIO or a turnaround CIO, it is  needs to be remembered that that technology impacts most employees and the hence the tolerance for the CIO failure and mistakes is far less than other executive disciplines particularly in bad times and so a CIO has to be always on his toes and alert.

CIO and the Data Dilemma

Traditionally, CIOs were considered to be experts in managing "structured data" - data generated by the ERP and CRM Systems and all systems which have a database structure of certain data fields. CIOs know how to deploy analytic tools around this structured data to derive, and extract meaningful business critical information and serve value to the business to be able to take "correct" and "decisive" business decisions. Also, CIOs know how to plan and manage and maintain their IT Infrastructure and Storage to manage this "structured data". 

So, it all seemed like pretty smooth and sound sailing so far!! One could fairly estimate the volume growth in the "structured data" based on some trend analysis of data growth in an enterprise over a period of couple of quarters / years. All one did was based on the expected volume data growth you provisioned / bought / deployed the necessary storage boxes / storage arrays. Overall, it was a cool and peaceful life for the CIOs!!

Then came the proliferation of mobile devices of all kinds and the availability of "rich" content business information and data generated by all sorts of embedded systems. This has literally made the CIOs throw away all the estimates on data growth and the storage infrastructure out of the window. The CIOs started calling data as "unstructured" for the simple reason that this deluge of information could not be classified, categorized and managed using the traditional Relationship Database Management Systems of their times. It called for the CIOs to look at the entire enterprise generation and management of information in a completed new way. 

Newer technologies like - server virtualization, virtualized desktop environment and cloud computing added to this complexity. Now, the CIOs had to take a relook at the storage architecture because - the servers were virtualized and VDI is also gaining acceptance in enterprises but the I/O piece i.e. the data storage devices still are not as robust as required, not intelligent and not as flexible as a CIO may desire. Technology solutions such flash-based drives or solid-state disks are options available, but the CAPEX costs are high in deployment of these options. Even if some CIOs managed to control and plan for the "unstructured" data deluge, there was another problem. Over a period of time, CIOs had ended up deploying storage solutions by multiple vendors and these solutions do not talk to each other. There were and still are issues on interoperability and interconnectivity of  these storage solutions deployed. 

The other problem faced by CIOs at large was that the "backup and archiving" window started becoming longer and more time consuming. So, the solution deployed were - deduplication and compression technologies. So CIOs, deployed technologies around disk-to-disk-to-tape backup solutions, others storage snapshots based solutions. All of these had their fair share of successes and failures.

Another challenge that CIOs had and still have is that, whenever a CIO buys a server, the server comes with its own hard disk drives. These internal server disks never get used as traditionally CIOs have been trained to use an external shared common data storage - the SAN box. 

So, what next? How do CIOs manage this ever growing, complex data dilemma? Does a CIO invest more on newer storage technologies or explore alternatives to explore and make maximum use of the existing storage infrastructure? I believe, as a CIO, one needs to choose the second option - make maximum use of existing storage infrastructure. The strategy could be - 

• look what you have,
• analyse and categorize the data
• move "hot" data on Solid State Disks (SSD) / Flash Drives, if you already have it or purchase when you do a storage refresh / additional purchase decision
• use the full capacity of existing tiers
• look at solutions around deduplication

In fact, storage virtualization and consolidation are emerging to lead the race herein and effective to simply storage management, reduce administrative costs and improve cycle times. CIOs could also look at cloud from a data protection - backup and archiving and disaster recovery mechanisms. It is very clear that in the future, the enterprise storage architecture and its deployment is expected to gain paramount importance for ensuring agility, performance and reliability and for the CIOs to be able to respond faster to business needs for new applications, improve service levels and improve the performance of the data center and reduce costs.

Today, CIOs need to accept and understand that the refresh cycles on enterprise storage are going to shorten and there will be a need for taking a relook at the enterprise storage architecture sooner than before.

Before Changing the CIO Agenda... Get the House in Order...

Though it is my personal view, I belief a CIO is a custodian of all that encompasses information in an organisation; information in all its forms and formats; systems that store, manage, retrieve, safeguard the organisational information; CIO is an analyst who is suppose to understand and guide the organisation on its journey to understand how technology fits into and aligns itself with business strategy.

So, the CIO's role is clearly changing. The advent of mobility, social networking, cloud computing, big data and -  do-it yourself easy applications is only accelerating the need to embark on this journey to change / journet to transform. The CIOs need to change their priorities.

It is said that there is a need for CIOs to look outward from the customer perspective and more importantly from a business-product standpoint of view. To do that the CIO needs to engage with customers to see how they can improve the customer's environment. There is a clear need to align Business and IT Spanning across the entire Customer Life Cycle. This is easier said than done.

As step one, the CIOs need to understand that before looking outwards, they need to get their "IT house in order" i.e to say that CIOs need to get the "basics in the right place". A CIO could take a 4 step approach to "put / get" his / her IT House in Order and is a given.

• Get the Basics Right
• Build on the Basics
• Concentrate on Quality of Service (QoS) and Building Partnerships
• Measure the KPIs and more importantly Publish the KPI Results

The above will help the CIO establish his / her credentials within the organization. The CIO needs to think of IT Services and run them as a "Business", treat the internal users as "customers" and partner with the "customers" to understand business. So, this is the transformation of the CIO role into a "Business Service Manager" role.

Also, traditionally, CIOs have always adopted the path - develop systems solution for business needs. Systems development is always a step-by-step approach, change management is done through software releases / patches creating a ever-existing gap between the business needs and systems. In this fast changing business environment, this will have to change, CIOs will need to think ahead of the business needs and will need to find innovative solution and remain ahead of the curve. In doing so, the CIOs will need to image possibilities, visualize end results and then create pathways to get to the desired; the CIOs will need to be strategic and develop their capabilities through gap assessment, training and a process to communicate with the organization.

It is also important that executive management in organization understand that a CIO with his/ her understanding of systems / technology and the overall business and the business environment it operates in is well poised to participate in the "strategy formulating" process with the CEO, CFO and the Senior Management of an organization; because as Ankush Chopra (Ph. D, Asst. Prof of Strategy at Babson College (U.S.A)) said at the CIO Summit in Pune recently - strategy without systems and /or systems without strategy both yield - no results.

Strategy without Systems and / or Systems without Strategy result in failures of the Critical Business Initiatives that are expected to bring about Business Transformation. It is at this point the blame games start and most of the times a CIO faces himself / herself at the receiving end of the argument without either party really understanding the root cause of the discomfort on not delivering a successful project. 

What defines a CIO?

Yes. The question is what defines a CIO? what does the CIO really mean? Is it just a title that you have "arrived" or does it mean something much more.

Most of the executive management attempts to define the CIO as - a technical person who is suppose to keep the "lights on", a person responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. The CIO is that person who fixes information systems in an organisation when they break down, sombody who "keeps things running". Now, it maybe a just a perception but it is predominately a very popular perception, at least in India.

The above argument is further strengthen by the fact that when looking for / recruiting a new CIO, organisations perceive that it is best to recruit at least an engineering graduate as a CIO because it is perhaps pereived that s/he can fix the information systems faster and quicker when they break down. But, I believe this is a myth. Does the CIO really himself / herself fix the issue or is the CIO responsible for "getting it fixed"? If the CIO fixes the issue himself /herself then the person is not a CIO but just a technical person, an issue fixer. If the CIO is responsible for "is getting the issue fixed" then the CIO needs to a manager of resources to fix the issue and not otherwise. The CIO needs to be an effective and efficient manager who should know how to get work done from young and smart technical people and an effective and efficient manager need not be an engineering graduate. The timely resolution of the break down and more its importantly its management is the point that is needs to be considered rather than otherwise. A CIO needs to delegate technical decisions to employees more familiar with details.

If the CIO is not a technical person then what is the CIO? Though it is my personal view, I belief a CIO is a custodian of all that encompasses information in an organisation; information in all its forms and formats; systems that store, manage, retrieve, safeguard the organisational information; CIO is an analyst who is suppose to understand and guide the organisation on its journey to understand how technology fits into and aligns itself with business strategy. 

So as a CIO, one needs to sufficiently engage in learning the business and attempting to align the technology strategy with the business strategy and not focus too much on implementing the latest technology. There needs to be a correlation and link between acquisition of a technology and the solution to a business problem. CIOs need to think business processes, work on business integration, work with the business leaders in helping them achieve their goals and objectives. 

It is also about management. A effective CIO is somebody who manages information, its flow and availability within and outside an organisation through technology; manages and maintains good and cohesive relationships with peers in business withn an organization and outside the organisation; somebody who manages people and team effectively; manages to "get it fixed" and keeps the "lights on" within pre-defined costs and overheads; and manages "expectations".

With the CIO's understanding of business processes and ability to understand the technology fit and its alignment with business startegy, the CIO can actually be a business strategist and a key partner to the CEO and the other executive management.

A Learning Experience during an ERP Implementation Project

An ERP Implementation always has its challenges and learning. Most CIOs get it correct with varied degree of success from the business perspective.

Here's one just learning experience during the SAP Implementation at a Large Infrastructure Company with multiple verticals in my career that it is very important to document the existing “as-is” Business Processes and then use the ERP Product to drive Business Process Transformation and document “to-be” Business Processes. Other critical factors for a successful ERP Project are –

• Creating & Managing the Supporting IT Infrastructure & Network,
• Project  Planning & Management,
• Ensure Minimize Code Changes / Customization,
• Adoption of Business Processes as defined in ERP Product,
• A Dedicated Project Team & End-User Training, and
• Effective Organizational Change Management & Communication

Also, there have been a few other learning too that a ERP Implementation – 

• needs a long-term commitment and support of the Top Management,
• the implementation approach could be - "Big Bang" or "Phased" approach and each approach has its own pro and cons, but primarily both work if the Project Management is effectively managed and handled,
• is a major "Change Management" exercise impacting the Business and should be effectively used as a "Transformation Tool" for the Best Practices and Business Process Planning,
• the Actual Business Benefits start coming in only after the use of ERP product purely as a "Transaction Capturing System" for the initial few months and the Top Management needs to be patient during this critical phase of the Project.

CIO - An Generalist or Specialist

Generalist is what I vote for. Vertical specific Business Knowledge can be acquired when the CIO as a Business person works with the Business. In my view, the basics / fundamentals are the same across all Businesses - the make, store, market, sell processes do not really change. Yes, there maybe industry specific tweaking for these Business processes which could be unique to specific industries.

 Furthermore, with the use of standardized ERP / CRM software products used to automate Business processes in the industry / vertical, it is the nomenclature / business terms used that change but the basic engine and technicalities on which the ERP / CRM / any Standardized application product run remains the same. Yes, there could be industry / vertical software products needed to automate certain unique Business Processes, but that is the Challenge and an Generalist with experience across verticals / industry can easily acquire the Business Knowledge.

Also, every company claims to have UNIQUE Business Processes that distinguishes them from peers in the same industry so even if one is a specialist there is a learning curve, some may call it "settling down period" / "first 90 days" etc., but the fact is that it exists. I would agree to the fact that for a Specialist the learning curve would be shorter compared to the Generalist but that does not mean that is cannot be acquired by the Generalist if he / her puts his / her mind to it.

The CIO is a Business person first and then a technology person, if this is the approach then it does not really matter if one is a Generalist or Specialist.