Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »August 06, 2007 — CIO —
Transformation.
IT has always possessed that power. And companies have sought to harness technology for competitive advantage ever since CBS used a Univac to beat ABC and NBC by predicting Dwight D. Eisenhower's victory in the 1952 presidential election.
However, organizations that want to leverage IT to beat the competition, to shake up their operations and even their industries, need more than technology, more than great ideas. They need to have IT departments that understand what makes their companies tick and IT leaders who know how to translate visions into actions.
This year's CIO 100 Awards honorees understand. They've embraced IT innovation as a tool for transformation, their winning projects motivated by critical business needs and the conviction, backed by solid analysis, that technology-enabled change can create new value. The CIOs at these companies define themselves not as technology suppliers but as facilitators of corporate growth. (Find out how we chose them.)
In fact, as our honorees report in an exclusive survey, their innovations most often originate with business leaders or cross-functional teams established to tackle a specific problem or opportunity. Seventy-eight percent say IT shares leadership of innovative projects with business sponsors. (To compare yourself with our CIO 100 honorees, take our self-assessment quiz.
"The first step was making sure that this wasn't viewed as an IT project," Flowserve CIO Linda Jojo tells writer Cindy Waxer about her award-winning effort to consolidate 68 ERP systems and multiple data centers in Using IT to Transform the Business: Three Keys to Success. "We've made sure that this project is something we talk about in terms of its business impact."
How to Make a Big Bang
These innovative CIOs don't shrink from ambitious projects. And, as Waxer writes, forward-thinking IT leaders see past the infrastructure they're charged with creating and maintaining to the end user's experience. Like Jojo, they're skilled at communicating the value of technology in business terms, whether the project is the central processing of check deposits captained by CTO Ron DePoalo for Merrill Lynch's Global Private Client Technology Group or the global computing grid for drug research championed by Karan Sorensen, CIO of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development.
But it's not enough to spell out the benefits of a big-bang project to the bottom (or top) line. Big projects take time, often expand in scope and usually affect employees throughout an organization. According to our survey, opposition to innovative initiatives comes most often from the business staff. CIO 100 honorees succeeded by generating a sense of urgency and excitement among senior company leaders. These CIOs also recruited top thinkers from within IT and across the company to contribute ideas, hone project parameters and rally the rank and file.