In Of late, the role of senior IT managers or future CIOs has come under major scrutiny: they are asked to go back to their IT promises to see if their capabilities and processes provide the required answers to the business needs and offer the necessary value. Some have questioned the validity of the capability matrix of IT functions as they see IT as a support function. In reality, the idea that is steadily creeping into the minds of future CIOs is this: it is critical to map IT capabilities with business capabilities, as IT is a business enabler.
Most industry experts argue that business is driven by technology, and mapping IT capabilities to business capabilities is an attempt to assess and define how inter-connected the IT organisation is to the business, and to determine the RoI for their technical architecture that is mapped to the business capabilities.
Why is Business Important?
Kamal Matta, Head-IT & Telecom, Sonic Biochem Ext Ltd., agrees that in today's competitive world, it is very difficult to survive by being just technical. To become a successful CIO, one must be able to come out his technical shell and be a techno-commercial leader.
To justify their role, future CIOs must be able to relate to the industry they work in and the inputs they provide, the output and resources they bring in to enhance the capabilities of CFO / CSO / CMO or all of them, says Matta.
Pradeep Khanna, Senior IT Manager, Infosys, relates to the theory of cause and effect when he says IT is a Karta and it is time we realised that IT exists to facilitate business and not the other way round.
In order to move to a strategic role by 2015, Khanna believes it is important to have a business case, not just for innovations and changes, but also for the very existence of the stuff that exists, in order to weed out the inefficiencies that might creep in as solutions age.
Khanna argues, Dont give me your gobbledygook: there is a strong need to stop trying to woo business with complicated technology jargon. Just as your CEO knows that any definition is a google away, and carries google on his hand-held, you need to understand that any business context is just a question away, and you need to carry the business google in your pocket (and your mind)..
Mayank Malik, Manager-IT & Automation, Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd, agreesthat by 2015, CIOs will be considered business partners and will no longer be just business enablers.
The CIOs of today grew up from retro IT organisations within a business and are labelled as Technologists. The vital skill for future CIOs will be to build a game-changing future-state IT organisation and re-labelling themselves as Strategic Business Technologists by marketing competencies and a vision of a self-built future-state IT organisation, says Malik.
SDPL Narayana, DGM-IT, Neuland Laboratories, has a point when he says that to be conversant with the complete business process pertaining to any industry, it is crucial for future CIOs to be open and transparent, be a go-getter, be customer centric, be accessible all the people across the organisation, reliable, accountable, acceptable by his team.
Map the Business
Sanjeev Kumar, CIO & President, Business Excellence, Adhunik Group of Industries, emphasises on the fact that CIO is actually a C level position;without a strong business sense, the C level does not mean much. There may be a very good technical person with good technical skills or there may be a very good functional expert who is strong in processes but without adequate leadership skills, a person does not get a C level position, says Kumar. He recommends, The process to get attuned to it is to start taking interest in the business decisions being taken, start analysing them, start finding reasons behind them and finally, aligning your thought process.
What makes more sense to the business, as Pradeep Khanna succinctly puts it, is that what will get you to map the business perspective is not the size of the next server you build, or the complexity of the code, but the number of minutes you shaved off the production process.
Kinshuk Hora, CIO, Glaxo Smithkline, drives the point home that for a successful future CIO, its not so much about gaps which can be bridged, once you have the right mindset and you accept the changing/changed role of the IT. According to him, the future lies less in doing technology and more in being at the heart of business. Possessing skills like having a business perspective and understandingstrategic vision,effective collaboration and partnershipsand adaptive communication will earn a place on the management team, which is crucial and critical if one is to be viewed as a true business executive. If the CIO is a true business executive, he will be someone the CEO is happy to discuss any business issue with I call it a litmus test of a successful CIO, says Hora.
Add new comment