On $%*&)$ Audits... Audit is a terrible word. It implies someone who shows up after a battle and bandages the wounded. We do lessons learned after each project. It’s a one or two hour discussion, not an audit. If a project went to hell, then yes, we’d do an official audit.
-Bob Weir, CIO, Northeastern University

As a CIO, you have more than enough responsibilities as chief technology strategist, vendor manager, Web overlord and security officer. Now, with the mandate to run the IT function like a business, you also have to be a CEO?planning and executing IT financial controls, marketing campaigns, HR strategies, customer service efforts and all the other disciplines that make a business run. There are probably hundreds of discrete practices that fall into these areas. We focused on more than 40 in our survey, "How to Run IT Like a Business," which was completed by more than 100 IT executives at companies hand-picked for their excellent IT reputations. But you don’t have to master all of these to do a credible job and capture the benefits. A handful of practices emerged as must-dos, common denominators for you to use as a foundation. And since respondents rated each practice in terms of its effectiveness and difficulty level, we’ve been able to draw conclusions about their relative return on investment. You can see at a glance in the following pages which practices will reward you more (or less) profitably for your effort.

For further discovery, use our online "IT as a Business Profiler" (www.cio.com/ritlab). With this tool, you can input your specific goal for running IT like a business and, based on the data, we’ll compute a profile of practices optimized for achieving that benefit.

Running I.T. like a business is not only about efficient operations and financial controls. CIOs need to leverage practices in all the processes and functions typical of any business?customer service, HR, supplier management, marketing and, of course, leadership and governance. Use this chart to find out what the practices are, which are being used most and how each rates in terms of relative effectiveness and difficulty of implementation. The data is compiled from more than 100 respondents to CIO’s survey "How to Run IT Like a Business."

5 Most EFFECTIVE practices

1. Regularly use portfolio management or other project prioritization methodology: 4.11

2. Employ an IT-dedicated financial officer: 3.98

3. Make the CIO a member of the corporate board or executive committee: 3.97