In our CIO profiles you detail your business strategies and how your role and department is enabling the organisation to achieve its strategic aims. But the journey has often only just begun for both the CIO and the organisation. 

So throughout 2012 CIO UK has been re-visiting a number of leading CIOs to see how the strategy has panned out, how new strategies are developing or what are the new challenges in a new organisation. 

Since appearing on the cover of CIO as IT leader at broadcaster ITV, Richard Cross has joined global architecture house OveArup as Group CIO.  Cross tells CIO about the culture aspect of his role to enable a modern and creative company to make the most of the internet and social media. Cross rightly believes his well educated user base is already doing these things, a CIO’s role is to harness that creativity for the benefit of the organisation. As Group CIO he has taken board members to Silicon Valley, embraced consumerisation, but ensured strong information security. 

David Jacks remains as enthusiastic as ever about his role and the role Thetrainline.com has in the future of transportation. The online train ticket retailer proved its mettle in 2010 when Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted and demonstrated the weakness in the global airline trade. Thetrainline.com demonstrates that today’s economy is also one of great change as it continues to grow, with Jacks investing in hardware and software as other companies contract their IT spend. SOA, Oracle, PCI accreditation and big investments in mobility have all filled his time.  Not only that, Jacks has rebalanced the levels of insourcing and outsourcing at Thetrainline, where the company was once heavily reliant on outsourcing. 

At newspaper publisher Daily Mail & General Trust CIODavid Henderson is incredibly upbeat considering he is in an industry that is in turmoil. As the Mail’s tabloid celebrity led journalism goes global the CIO is embracing cloud computing to rapidly scale the IT provision to meet demand. Social media and consumerisation have also been embraced as the modern media looks at these technology phenomena as essential business tools. To keep customer data secure Henderson and his team have implemented strong data security, invested in education and governance and put in single sign on. All of this has reduced email usage and freed the CIO up to concentrate on innovation through a new Ideas Factory division. 

Read the CIO Profile updates here: 

Daily Mail CIODavid Henderson sprints to Ideas Factory

Thetrainline CIO enjoys taking the strain

Arup CIO builds collaborative structures