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 »
Webcast: In the Google Apps Cloud: How to Achieve Your Business Objectives
Dec 3rd, '09, 1 - 2 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Council member Brent Hoag, Director, Global IT, at JohnsonDiversey, as he discusses the adoption of Google Apps which has helped meet four corporate goals; sustainability, simplification, increased employee productivity and global collaboration.
Webcast: Collaboration Initiatives: Benchmarks & Best Practices
Dec 15th, '09, 4 - 5 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Council members Ruth Thorpe, VP & CIO at the U.S. Pharmaceutical Operations of Sanofi-Aventis, and Gary Kuyper, CIO at Bethany Christian Services, as they speak about their collaboration initiatives and experiences in how and why they chose the social networking and collaboration tools they are using and their business goals for collaboration, and facing culture change challenges.
Data Overview: Collaboration Initiatives Field Guide: Benchmarks & Best Practices
This appendix to the Council Field Guide provides an analysis which discusses benchmarks for collaboration IT implementation costs, adoption rates and payoffs. The overview identifies top IT and business goals and satisfaction rates for collaboration initiatives as well as best practices and lessons learned for implementing collaboration IT.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »August 22, 2007 — CIO —
Not too long ago I was in a meeting with the CEO of a family-run enterprise. He told me the story of his immigrant grandfather. The grandfather came to the United States through Ellis Island and started what is today a very successful retail and distribution business. The CEO told me how simple it had been for his grandfather to measure the business results each week. In the original store, his grandfather kept two cigar boxes. One was for his bills and the other was for the receipts and cash. At the end of each week he would reconcile the receipts with the bills, and if there was money left over it was a good week. The business objective was to have 52 good weeks in a row every year, along with satisfied customers.
Fast forward three generations to our world. We have replaced cigar boxes, carbon paper and receipts with highly integrated business processes, mission-critical technology infrastructures and end-user technology that continues to become more sophisticated to keep up with the employees who use it. Unfortunately, the way companies measure the effectiveness of their technology support is too often exponentially more elaborate yet significantly less meaningful than the method used by my friends grandfather.
Thats because most IT departments continue to track how well they provide technology support, not how well that support boosts employee productivity.
Measuring Activities, Not Results
Ironically, many IT departments use inward-focused measures to gauge the effectiveness of their technology support. Even if they outsource support, they rely on internally-focused service level measures to monitor the outsourcing company. Theyre not called service level agreements by accident. SLAs largely measure how effectively the outsourcing firm has delivered its servicesnot the impact of its service on user productivity.
A research study that Unisys conducted last year of 243 North American organizations provides further evidence of the need for CIOs to start measuring their departments real impact on user productivity. One piece of the evidence: We asked the surveyed organizations what criteria they used to justify investments to improve user support. What was the No. 1 investment criterion that large organizations (at least $1 billion in revenue) cited? Not whether it would help the company to gain a competitive advantage. Not even whether it would boost user productivity. Rather, the primary justification was how much it would cost the IT department to make the enhancement to support services.
Yet our study uncovered a far more important reason today for measuring the impact of technology support on user productivity: Technology has become a key tool for employees who are closest to revenue. The salespeople, customer service reps, field technicians and other employees who have daily interactions with customers can determine whether business is gained or lost. If you arent measuring whether and how the technology and services you give these employees are making them more productive, how can they become more productive? How do you know if one technology tool is better than another for making the sale or fixing broken equipment? Or how do you know if one of your training programs is better than another for getting customer service reps to respond better to inquiries?