Finding a new role for the CIO

Jamie Marshall
Database and Network Journal. 44.3 (June 2014): p10.

Technology and the way it is used is critical to the success of nearly every business operating today.
It is absolutely fundamental to many key business strategies from maximising internet presence
through to data mining and business intelligence. And we have seen a wave of exciting technological
innovations sweeping through organisations in recent years from smartphones to cloud-based
infrastructure and from big data to social media.
So you might expect CIOs and IT Directors to be sitting pretty, playing a major role in shaping the
business strategy of the organisations they work for. But this is not the case, according to a recent
poll conducted by Calyx which examined the opinions of more than 200 CIOs and IT Directors.
Indeed, while most CIOs and IT Directors may have won the battle for a seat at the boardroom table,
it seems that many are still struggling to exert any real influence over business strategy. And the
main reason why this continues to be the case is that they are too busy 'fighting fires and troubleshooting IT problems, to focus on driving the business forward.
The survey found that even though nearly two-thirds (64%) of those polled sit on their company's
board, rising to 70% among SME respondents, only one third (33%) of the overall sample saw
driving strategic growth through technology as their most important responsibility. More significantly,
even fewer (16%) actually spend their working day driving the development of business through IT
while only 11% say they focus on developing strategic concepts around IT to move the organisation
forward. This compares to nearly half (46%) whose everyday tasks involve firefighting: that is IT
management and keeping systems up and running.
The survey highlights the pressures on senior IT staff as being a key factor keeping them pinned
down in the current technological role. It paints a picture of overworked CIOs having to cope with
one problem after another, frustrated at having to deal with concerns over legacy systems (22%);
disaster recovery (21%); security (44%) and data management issues (60%).
Indeed, frustration with their position within the business role does seem to be a major theme for
CIOs.
Senior management demanding greater productivity from the IT team is highlighted as a major
frustration by 24% of the sample while 17% reference creaking legacy systems that are too
expensive and integrated in the business to overhaul.
Why IT Holds Sway
We've heard numerous explanations of why CIOs continue to focus most of their attention on IT
rather than business strategy from cultural issues around the way IT is perceived within the

organisation and the way CIOs historically perceive themselves as the 'guardians of IT' within a
business.
There is an element of truth in all these arguments but for me, the main reason for CIOs' operational
focus is quite simple--they have to keep the lights on at all times. The costs of downtime are well
documented. They range from lost sales to reduced productivity and damage to the brand. Even the
shortest outage can be a financial disaster, so its hardly surprising that uptime is a top priority for
CIOs.
What is arguably more surprising - especially if you consider the breadth of skills needed to meet
today's maintenance and support challenges - is that many CIOs still attempt to do everything
themselves, in-house.
The survey does indeed indicate that many respondents see 'freeing up the in-house IT team' to
focus on core IT drivers as a key benefit of outsourcing. Yet the findings also indicate that the
majority (60%) do not currently outsource to a managed services provider, a figure that rises to 79%
among SMEs with under 250 staff, a figure which highlights the fact that many such organisations
are likely to feel that they have neither the time, resources nor the available capital to fully
investigate these options.
Driving an Outsourced Approach
Maybe they would be more likely to take the plunge and outsource if they completely understood
that the benefits of outsourcing are not purely around the time and cost savings that migrating to the
approach can bring, nor even around robust IT security being maintained at all times, cited by nearly
half of our survey sample as a key benefit of managed services. In fact, the main value comes from
the technological expertise that the outsourcer brings with them.
Today's ICT demands in-depth knowledge of telephony, networking, storage and applications. It's
impossible for all but the largest enterprises to hold that expertise in house. However, by
outsourcing, organisations are gaining access to a specialist team who know these technologies
inside out and can bring added value through sharing that expertise. At the same time, CIOs get the
benefit of the opportunity to refocus IT time and expertise on creative ideas and innovative thinking
that address real operational challenges and help drive the future of the organisations they work for.
www.calyxms.com
Jamie Marshall, chief technology officer, Calyx Managed Services
Marshall, Jamie

Source Citation

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(MLA 7 Edition)
Marshall, Jamie. "Finding a new role for the CIO." Database and Network Journal June 2014:
10. Academic OneFile. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.