Looking Back, Looking Forward

Post date: Nov 18, 2009 12:41:44 PM

I'm a member of the St. Louis chapter of the Society of Information Managers (SIM), an organization that supports CIO, CTO, and IT Leaders in business, not for profit, and academia . We had a very well-led and interesting panel discussion last night that validated some of my thinking on various subjects - and provided some 'teachable moments' too. One nice thing about SIM is that it is committed to giving back to the community, and does so through scholarships to local universities as well as pro bono work to needy organizations.

Looking back ten years, we were all very concerned at this time with Y2K, and many of us remember the late nights before, and the anti-climatic actual event. Looking forward, who knows?

Some things I took away from the discussion:

• • We are, at our core, a people business and get things done through our people. So we need to take care to nurture, develop relationships, and build teams. The CIO's success is more about leading and influencing people than being the best technician.

  • The IT function is in a unique position to either be a burden to or a lever for business success. Becoming the lever requires a commitment to the understanding of what is needed from the IT organization to grow the business, and to provide it as a business partner. Order takers are burdens. I say unique position because IT has visibility into business processes across the organization and its functions, and can choose to reengineer or support the business in a value added fashion.

  • We need to think outside the ERP - and we've spent the last ten years trying to think inside the ERP. It is solutions outside the ERP that will lead to competitive advantage.

  • Global customer bases must lead to global sourcing - and the CIO needs to be smart about what functions contribute to key competitive advantages (consider internalize), and what are commodity functions (consider outsourcing). There are cost and process implications to sourcing decisions where the answer isn't necessarily the obvious 'lowest cost' alternative.

  • Disruptive technologies are out there, and the next ten years will bring an ever-faster pace of change, of which the CIO must be aware, and to which he must adapt.

  • Interestingly, buzz words were few and discussion of specific technology cursory. This reinforced for me my view of the CIO's role as a vested partner in the business.