How Can CIOs Build Relationships With Their Board?

With the proliferation of technology and it's disruptive effects on the business environment, CIOs should be key players in the decision-making process of any organization. Despite their importance, many CIOs find it challenging to engage directors in a strategic dialogue on even the most critical issues.

Unsurprisingly, one of the main reasons is the lack of technical expertise, information, and understanding of what digital transformation is and how it works. Nevertheless, regular interactions between tech leaders and board members will increase the chance of strategic talks in matters of growth opportunities and digital innovation.

How to Form Critical Connections

Bridging this gap is essential, and a combination of both buttoned-down and informal conversations are needed to boost the board's technology literacy and, ultimately, set a clear tech agenda.

It's important to remember that board members will pay closer attention when discussing how tech can drive productivity, innovation, and growth, rather than cyber security projects. Staying clear away from tech jargon is also critical to success, with CIOs having to pay attention to what information they present to the board so that everyone understands it.

One-on-ones with board members, preferably in less formal settings, such as over lunch or coffee, can help bring the conversation to each's level of tech literacy. For added credibility, CIOs also need to confer information regarding risk and operational resilience by backing up their claims with facts and figures. These provide an enhanced level of transparency and credibility needed to put everyone on the same playing field. Still, it's far more critical that board members understand the business benefits than the technical details of any project undertaken by the CIO.

How to Enhance These Relationships

More and more businesses install CIOs or other similar leaders with technical experience. Unfortunately, however, very few board seats are up for grabs, with only 10% of S&P 500 companies having a tech subcommittee and only 5% with an appointed technologist on the board.

This trend only reinforces the need for CIOs to build and maintain strong relationships with board members through frequent and effective communication. Ongoing dialogue with the board will help them understand the changing dynamics of the business landscape.

Practical strategies that CIOs can employ in boosting their relationships with the board include the following:

What Should a CIO Strategy Look Like in 2019?

With the current technological revolution sweeping through all aspects of conducting business, the role of the CIO has never been greater. Increasing customer value and improving the IT delivery at scale, velocity, and affordability should be at the top of their priorities in 2019.

Some areas of the business that need to be given special attention by CIOs need to include customer and employee experience, digital business services, and ecosystem microservices. Besides, many IT leaders should spend some time finding ways to reduce interdepartmental friction as well as wasted resources. It is crucial for them to identify the company's barriers to improvement and tackle them as fast as possible.

One common issue presents itself in the form of budgets. While the IT department's costs and expenditures are growing exponentially with every passing year, the allocated budgets remain steady and linear. It's for this reason why CIOs need to teach other department heads and those in key leadership positions about the present digital transformation as well as the investments needed to achieve it.

Sean Ferrel, Managed Solution Founder states,“Technology has moved from the core to the floor. CIO’s should worry less about tools at the core of their environments and focus more on users, apps, productivity and overall process that happens in the floor of their business. Most business owners are getting more involved in technology decisions and many of those focus around gathering valuable data and figuring out what insights that data gives us to get an upper hand on the business. While some might use the terms IoT, Machine Learning, BI or even AI as the new norm, we see a world of data that’s disconnected and in many ways “gold” to the business. That being said, getting out of the day to day world of building the ship and finding the treasure is what we as IT leaders should be focused on.”

So, what should a CIO strategy look like in 2019?

What Needs to Change

Before going into what investments are needed, we must first analyze the things that need to change within the organization for those investments to take hold. These changes can classify into two main categories.

On the one hand, there are personnel changes. These will include changing the perspective within the company about the importance of future IT investments. Some examples include things such as getting managers on board with the idea by making use of data. Similarly, increasing customer focus both internally and externally. They can enable the digital inclusion, equity, and accessibility of all relevant parties. And also, driving innovation to increase the relevance of IT and allowing strategy alignment.

From an organizational change perspective, CIOs need to tackle tech debt and increase their digital footprint. Making way for automation, supply chain digitization, and DevSecOps should also have priority. Phasing out the data center, modernizing governance, and improving data analytics and quality need to be on this list as well. Last but not least, CIOs need to focus their attention on cybersecurity, GDPR compliance, data protection compliance, and other such security solutions.

Some of these changes can be tackled more at a time. Reducing the tech debt, for instance, is about replacing old, monolithic systems with more secure and customizable counterparts.

What Are the Investment Priorities?

Like we said in the beginning, customer-centricity is the key to success. The digital environment offers both a way to engage with the audience and deliver a superior experience across the entire customer journey. Be it financial institutions, healthcare providers, nonprofits, or governmental agencies; all stand to gain from better customer engagement.

To achieve it, however, flexibility is critical. By moving away from project-based episodic deliveries and towards continuous integration, companies can also begin to build trust across the organization and between IT and other departments. By focusing on the customer, everyone will be working toward a common goal and results are sure to follow.

Regarding investments, CIOs should focus on improving security and digital transformation, as a whole. Transitioning to the cloud and focusing on IT continuity are also aspects that should be invested in. Considering the right kind of talent, be it through leading, training, or better hires, is always a plus. Companies can also benefit here by accessing managed services from remote partners. Application upgrades and getting more value from past investments will also prove worthwhile.

Conclusion

All of these issues presented here can differ and should take precedence based on every company's unique needs. Nevertheless, CIOs should prioritize their resources on people, security, and digital transformation to align themselves better with the customer's expectations. Together with Managed Solution, you will be well on your way there. Contact us today for a free consultation!

The Role of the CIO

Today, it’s both a challenging and exciting time for CIOs. The role of the CIO previously was to lead the information systems and data processing departments. Today, however, the responsibilities and skill sets of a CIO are drastically different. CIOs are not there to worry about how to keep all those systems connected while saving money by moving to the cloud. Today, they have a more prominent place in a business’ strategic decision-making and are in a position to do a lot more.

CIOs are there to drive the thinking and resulting strategies regarding what to do with all the compiled data. They find ways to take the business forward by getting maximum value from the data on hand.

What do CIOs bring to the table in today’s highly-competitive and tech-focused business environment?

What is the Role of a CIO?

A CIO is in the executive position that deals with the IT needs of an enterprise. The role can’t portray with an exact description. Today’s CIOs are distancing from operational responsibilities, and their part includes:

Collaboration platforms, big data analytics, cloud computing, mobile computing, IoT, and AI are new challenges that CIOs now face. Their focus has shifted to data security, service analysis, and market reach.

CIO: Skills and Qualifications

Typically, CIOs have degrees in information systems, software engineering, and computer science. Besides an IT background, an essential factor for landing a CIO role is - experience. Employers seek people with a minimum of 5-year experience in IT management as well as business acumen. The essential skills for the CIO position are – leadership, strategic planning, project management, software development management, change management, relationship and network building, and financial and business acumen.

Does Every Company Need a CIO?

With outside consultants, cloud-based tools, and gumption, a small business with basic tech needs can survive. However, that’s only temporary, as every company comes to a point when somebody other than the CEO needs to make IT decisions. This point is at a unique moment in your growth, and you’ll need to answer questions like:

To ensure that your IT lead has an equal and active role in deciding what’s best for your enterprise, you need a CIO that has worked outside of a digital environment, who has navigated a corporate environment, and who can help bring the clout of the C-level title.

With new technological advancements, the CIO position continues to evolve; fueled by several significant trends that are coming our way and are mutually reinforcing each other. These trends are IoT, DevOps, and Big Data (paired with analytics and machine learning). The CIOs are the ones who should be driving these areas forward, knowing both tech and business trends. Certain key areas, such as agriculture, insurance, law, biotech, and healthcare are much affected by technology. There, CIOs are left concerned with the increasing expectations placed upon them.

When looking to hire a CIO, be sure to check whether they are qualified, skilled, and experienced enough for the position. On the other hand, your enterprise may benefit from fractional CIO services. These services deliver a flexible tech solution that evolves and adapts to meet your evolving needs. Contact Managed Solution to help you evaluate your business needs.

 

Blurring the Lines Between CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, and CIOs in the Digital Age

With the rise of the Digital Age and the Internet of Things (IoT), the business environment is going through a series of disruptive changes that seem to alter the most fundamental aspects of the economy. It would seem that almost nothing will remain as it was before. The traditional hierarchical system begins to break down, as seen with most of the start-ups today.

These examples presented here are but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the disruption brought forth by today's technological revolution.

The implementation of new technologies has taken center stage, as of late, meaning that the bridge between business and IT is closer than ever. And as a consequence, the lines between CEOs, CTOs, and CIOs are also beginning to blur. So, what are the responsibilities of these three positions?

CEO - As the most senior corporate, executive, or administrative officer, the CEO is tasked with looking at the big picture items regarding company growth.

CTO - The chief technology officer, or sometimes known as the chief technologist, is tasked with all technological and scientific issues regarding the organization.

CIO - The chief information officer, on the other hand, works with traditional information technology (IT) as well as all computer systems that support the enterprise's goals.

CFO - The chief financial officer is responsible for financial affairs within the organization. The modern CFO is using emerging technology for more strategic planning.

Does your business plan for 2019 include how your organization can best leverage technology? With technology becoming so prevalent in companies and their successes and growth, the relationship between the CEO/CTO/CIO/CFO etc is growing stronger.

The Merger of Roles

Looking at these simple definitions and together with what we mentioned previously, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that these three roles within an organization begin to overlap. As technology is becoming a significant factor in an organization's growth and efficiency, it only stands to reason that the CEO will also have to consider it.

Similarly, the CIO and CTO positions are also evolving in response to this digital transformation of the business landscape. This shift is represented by how CIOs view their roles within a company. In 2017, for instance, only 20% of CIOs still saw themselves solely in their traditional roles of managing IT operations. That number was down from 27% the year prior.

By comparison, around 50% of CIOs are more focused on implementing new systems and aligning them with the company's business goals - a figure up from 45% in 2016. Also, 31% lean towards a more strategic focus, spending the majority of their time on various business innovation and growth activities.

At the same time, however, the business side of an enterprise is becoming more tech savvy. With an overall increase in digital literacy and programming skills, it's becoming increasingly apparent that these roles are overlapping in certain areas. It was Brook Colangelo, EVP, and CTO at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who once said in a tweet that “Everybody is a technologist and everybody in technology is in the business.”

In other words, these business leaders need to forsake the traditional way of doing things and take advantage of these skill sets. They need to create an environment in which employees are empowered to innovate, thanks to today's many digital technologies.

 

How Will Fractional CIO Services Help Your Organization?

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By customizing the perfect mix of software, hardware, and IT services, Fractional CIO services delivers a flexible technology solution that evolves and adapts to meet customer needs and exceed expectations at every stage of their business cycle.
What Results Will Your Business See From Fractional CIO Services?
The convergence of in-depth technical knowledge, astute business processes, and expert engineering and financial services into a solid business model enables agencies to proactively address systematic budgeting and long-term management of their IT infrastructures.
Fractional CIO Services brings separately managed IT Processes and components into a single holistic program to deliver end to end services that emphasize benefits to users / customers.
Fractional CIO Services focuses on cost, contract and organizational management of hardware and software across the entire life cycle.

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CIO Strategy: Who Benefits From An IT Roadmap In 2018?

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A technology roadmap can help the CIO act more in line with the strategy of the organization. It benefits both technology leaders and functional leaders and encourages collaboration that results in true executive alignment on existing and new investments.
What is a technology roadmap?
A roadmap is the governing document that dictates specifically how technology will support the business strategy and help drive businesses priorities over the next 3-5 years. From what I have seen, the best roadmaps contain the following:
  1. A strategy statement with the list of the strategic priorities for the business (not IT-specific).
  2. A timeline of the initiatives and projects that will occur over the next several years with approximate start and end dates, durations, and sizes.
  3. A prioritized list of improvement opportunities. This is generated jointly by the business and IT and should be refreshed periodically.
  4. High-level justifications for each project. These should be robust for projects over the next 12 months and simpler statements for projects past the 12 month horizon.
  5. The estimated cost and duration for each project. This is specific and reasonably accurate for projects occurring over the next 12 months and can be vaguer for projects that go out farther than that.
  6. An owner for each project. This is the sponsoring executive or delegate directly overseeing the project. For projects in the next 12 months it should be the specific person and for projects beyond that it can be the owning executive.
To support the roadmap (but keep separately), I recommend technology departments keep up-to-date versions of:
How will you use it?
The roadmap has three primary functions:
  1. The IT leader will use it to facilitate investment discussions with the rest of leadership. The IT leader will use the roadmap as a baseline when discussing new projects or priorities with functional executives. It will help leadership understand how to balance investment and project priorities and provide a way to visualize tradeoffs.
  2. The IT department will use it to improve planning for projects and resources. The roadmap will help them anticipate resourcing needs, plan assignments, software and vendor selection, and costs ahead of time, and make it possible to start visioning and planning with the functional owners well in advance.
  3. Functional leaders will use it to understand what is required of and will be delivered to their departments. It helps them clearly understand how they should balance existing roadmap initiatives with new requests. The roadmap will keep functional leaders aligned on strategic technology priorities across the enterprise. Active management of the roadmap will result in much better executive alignment and stakeholder buy-in before projects even begin.
Who benefits from it?
Technology Leadership
The roadmap is designed to structure the communication between the technology department and the functional executives in a manner that allows the IT department to:
Functional Leadership
The roadmap allows functional executives to be strategic when they request new or improved technology. They can use their functional strategies to begin working with IT leadership to determine which types of technology projects will be required to achieve their goals.
The roadmap provides transparent resourcing needs for when business staff will need to be assigned to IT projects, clear traceability to costs, and the detail for why those resources and dollars are required.
Most importantly, it provides a strategic, structured manner of governing changes to business needs as they arise. It makes sure there is a technology voice at the table when decisions are made that require IT support, and it encourages balancing priorities across the business, diffusing conflict before it arises.
Staff and Project Teams
The roadmap clearly spells out why the projects they are working on are important and, as things on the roadmap move or are re-prioritized, it forces the leaders to explain why and how those priorities are shifting. The roadmap encourages a clear and regular line of communication between leadership and staff.
The Bottom Line
The business needs to fully participate in the development process. In fact, if the CIO reports to anyone other than the CEO, I recommend the sponsoring executive sit outside of IT. Because of the strategic nature of the document and how critical leadership buy-in will be, it will need support at the highest levels of the enterprise.
If you are a technology leader: you need to push the executives to support the development of an IT roadmap to help you invest strategically and have structured conversations around investment with the other executives.
If you are not a technology executive: you should be pushing your organization to develop a roadmap so you can act more strategically in your area and benefit the business holistically with new investments.

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Contact Managed Solution to schedule a Network & System Assessment to build the most strategic architecture around your systems and networks. 858-429-3084

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Talk About Tech Trends: Local Information Executives Discuss Emerging Strategies and Tactics From a Technology Perspective

Talk about Tech Trends

To download the full magazine and read the full interviews, click here.
Featured on www.sdbj.com
About These Excerpts
San Diego — Local Information Executives Discuss Emerging Strategies and Tactics From a Technology Perspective
Excerpts were selected for publication by the San Diego Business Journal from interviews conducted with local industry experts as part of a survey by Managed Solution, a San Diego-based full-service technology firm. These excerpts have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Alex-Bates_t180Alex Bates
CTO Mtell
On leveraging big data: Some customers are more paranoid about hoarding their own data and others are more open to sharing it because they get greater benefits.
Offloading a lot of the IT support, I think that everyone is warming up to the idea in the industrial realm. For big data, the costs are still a little bit high, to truly host that in the public cloud. The best scenario would be to use public cloud for elastic computing, scale it back down, figure out how to transfer the data.
But I definitely think it’s the wave of the future.
On customer-focused solutions: For us, our customers, we travel out and get a whole new appreciation for the challenges they face. When you meet them on a drilling rig, you get a whole new appreciation for what they face.
The movie Deepwater Horizon showed how their lives are on the line. People are responsible for many lives, and for us, our software is supposed to help reduce risks and predict catastrophic incidents. For us to deliver value, we have to have state-of-the-art monitoring capabilities and integrate with their work so things don’t slip through the cracks. We have to deliver value for improving efficiency with equipment.
Joe-Beery_t180Joe Beery
SVP & CIO ThermoFisher Scientific
On the role of IT in corporate strategy: My CEO is looking to move to cloud strategy faster. The CEO never thought we would say this, but we’re the competitive advantage for the company. It’s an incredibly target-rich environment because we can do things better than we’ve done before.
In the next five years it’s going to be drastically different. You won’t have silos. The question is what do we go after first that’s going to drive the best amount of value?
The speed we can move is so much faster, you don’t want to make mistakes; you want to invest in the right things.
We are connecting all of our sales force around lead management. We did a lot of work crunching our CRM data and systems to better enhance our sales agents to manage leads. As we continue to roll out the cloud it gets us closer to the customer.
On real impacts: When you look at what we do, the mission is to make the world healthier, cleaner, safer, and that is all digital. So this is going to change the way we live.
I have two kids alive today because of what the company does. They were both born with a rare genetic disorder, and because of our instruments (the rare genetic mutation was found and treated). (The kids) take medication three times a day now, and it was this digital answer.
When I think of the future of big data, you see a future that is really different for everyone.
Johnathan_B_t180Jonathan Behnke
CIO City of San Diego Department of Information Technology
On what IoT means to operations: We hear from a lot of vendors in the technology sector and when we talk about it as a local government, IoT is discussed alongside Smart Cities. There is a lot of discussion about improvements to transportation, development, and energy.
We see a lot of potential for the city and surrounding governments to partner and make life better for our residents, neighbors, and community members. The city announced a partnership with Google Waze, and we are looking at how we can use that data to really improve transportation. Our traffic engineering department can take that data and potentially implement changes.
The city also has a project to deploy LED streetlights, and some will have sensors to generate new data and drive analytics that the city can make improvements from.
If the regional governments can take advantage of IOT and aggregate that information into a single source, there are some great possibilities. You can take analytics and data from multiple organizations and aggregate it and put up a heat map, and so some really cool things.
The city has an open data portal releasing a lot of data sets to the community. As we look at IOT, we really look at a lot of future potential, data and analytics, which could ultimately bring improvements to the everyday life of citizens.
Ken_Lawonn_t180Ken Lawonn
SVP & CIO Sharp HealthCare
On how IT is helping drive revenue through the company: We are looking at taking our current assets to expose those services to more through things like telehealth, video-based, online services which allow us to extend services without having to build new buildings or have people come to us.
Using technology makes things more convenient for individuals. We use technology to understand if we are providing the best treatment, and make sure we are not penalized or making sure we are effectively leveraging our payment process. That’s how we are effectively leveraging technology to help increase
On the role of IT in corporate strategy: We’ve gone from IT being a back-end service to being partners with the business. It is the engine for business transformation and growth.
There is hardly anything we look at that doesn’t have technology involved in some way. There is so much technology available, pick the right technology and hold people accountable to leverage it and provide value.
We have to think about how we bend the cost curve. We can’t keep increasing the spend if there isn’t some return. Everyone likes to add stuff, nobody likes to take things away.
CIOs are becoming more like change agents and transformational leaders. The message is we’ve got to be nimble, faster, more accessible.
Todd-Stewart_t180Todd Stewart
VP, Global Infrastructure and IT Operations Western Digital
On the public cloud: Public cloud is one of several tools for corporate computing, but not one
that solves every need — or will ever solve every need. This is a hybrid world.
Public cloud isn’t cheap. Some things run cheaper on premise. Sometimes you have capital to spend, and public cloud is only OpX. Fit the right tool to the right job.
On the role of IT in corporate strategy: Our company views IT as a key enabler for marketing, sales, manufacturing, business intelligence, supply chain, and productivity.
This change occurred because our CIO and his team set out to understand every facet of our business, and then focused on delivering innovation at every opportunity. “Keeping the lights on,” low-value work was moved to SaaS and cloud, allowing our internal resources to focus on innovation and delivering value.
Patrick-Tinkleberg_t180Patrick Tinklenberg
VP of Information Technology Sycuan Casino
On how IT is helping drive revenue through the company: A lot of people think of IT as being a cost center. We really tie every initiative we do in IT to some business initiative. Sometimes those initiatives are not specifically a revenue target. We don’t always look at return on investment, sometimes the focus is return on objective.
When it comes to truly revenue focused goals we do a lot of projects for marketing and for finance that drive revenue back into the casino.
We also take some of the things we do really well that other casinos don’t do and commercialize them. As an example, we are commercializing a process we developed in-house for transferring data in real time to analytics providers. We are the only casino that does that for this provider, and now they want to commercialize the product and offer it to other casinos.
On IoT: We are expanding, so we’re looking at smart building technologies. You’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of end points, from lighting, to fans, to temperature sensors, to valves for sprinkler systems, all can be tied together and integrated to a system that controls everything.
We have a little over 2000 slot machines on our floor. Each of them sends us all kinds of data, being able to mine all of that data, being able to grab all of that useful data, and process it with streaming analytics is going to be very important for us.

Are you a CIO or CTO industry leader focused on delivering innovation for your business? If so sign up for a  CIO/CTO interview!

Infographic: Avoiding the IT Hiring Struggle with Managed Services

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