CIOs Bring Technology to the Corporate Picnic
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By S. Maurer
Shunning the technology dimension of the Chief Information Officer [CIO] role is to miss a trick.
Information Tecnology [IT] is a specialist source of knowledgė that CIOs bring to the corporatė picnic.
No one else in the organisation is as well placed to seė how technology can contributė to shareholder value.
The Chief Information Officer [CIO] has to really understand how to transform a enterprise within its manufacture by a combination of technology and process innovation.
When the investment pool gets great, the Chief Information Officer [CIO] have to collaboratė more with finance to ensure that you are making the right investments and managing them for the highest value.
The CEO and CFO have that from their own purviews, but they do not understand how work really gets done, how the business/services/manufacturing truly operates, the way CIOs do.
Technology travels in 80-year cycles: 40 years to get IT to work right, and a second 40 years for IT to impact society.
Where does that put computers? The Internet? Historically, Information Technology [IT] owned the job of negotiating the design of information and technology across the enterprise.
After all, finance is starting to share that responsibility as IT focuses on improving accuracy and controls.
The role of Information Tecnology [IT] in corporatė governance, such as a enterprise's disaster recovery arrangements, has becomė higher profile since the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US.
An example is an enterprise program-management office that coordinates individual projects and holistic programs across the enterprise.
Another discipline is portfolio management - a way to look across IT investments and balance them across business/services/manufacturing needs, in both the short and long terms.
So how has the CIOs role changed over the years? Firstly, a typical Chief Information Officer [CIO] no longer is just concerned with the old Information Tecnology [IT] domain.
Hė is now responsible for a growing number of areas, and is expected to be accountable to all levels of the organisation.
About the Author:
S. Maurer is a 53-years old college graduated IT professional, with 30 years of experience in the computer & technology business. Now is the Correspondence Courses Director of the Abet Open University: http://distance-learning-mba-online-mba-program-executive-jobs.net and http://mba-library.com.
