The Changing Role of the CIO and IT Departments

IT operations are the lifeblood of any company’s success and an operating expense that is most often second only to payroll. During a decade and a half in the industry we’ve witnessed Seismic changes that have drastically affected the way IT Departments are perceived and how they are expected to deliver services within their organization.

Overly siloed IT Departments no longer work and today they are more successful collaborating as one team with one clearly defined goal. They are under extreme pressure to simplify and streamline resources to meet the often aggressive service levels the business requires. IT Departments are competing with a multitude of IT-as-a-service cloud offerings that allow their business to easily scale up or down on-demand services and pay as they go for hardware (HaaS), saving capital costs and reducing overall maintenance costs.

To stay ahead of the competition, CIO’s need their IT Managers and teams to become as agile and dynamic as the competition. Understanding that the new role of IT is as a broker of services and the key to success is acting quickly and keeping things simple and fast is extremely important. Unless they can deliver better, faster, simpler service, IT Departments will go the way of the floppy disk.

Tomorrow’s CIO has to determine what technological capabilities could provide the greatest impact to the business and how to deliver them proficiently. They need to be a technology visionary, keeping up with the current trends while maintaining an in-depth knowledge of the business. Regular collaboration with their line-of-business executive colleagues is important in building an IT strategy that aligns perfectly with the business strategy.

For over 15 years we’ve worked collaboratively with CIOs, IT Managers and Business Owners, helping them plan and build an IT strategy that aligns with their business requirements and solves important issues. As the role of technology management continues to evolve, we’ll continue to work with our clients, sharing our industry insights and helping them ensure their business gets the most out of their IT investments.