The IT Beacon

In the C-Suite: Digital Gold

Are you aware that you have an asset that:

• Is significant enough to warrant representation on the balance sheet
• You have invested in heavily – and continue to do so
• Has a shelf life – although its value may increase before it goes into decay
• Is largely ungoverned
• Its absence could lead to your imprisonment
• Is easily contaminated and thus potentially a liability?

Read my latest Financial Times piece for more details. Click here.

e-Brand Management

The difference between the cost of a company and the value of a company is directly correlated to the brand of the company. Therefore it makes sense to approach all value creation activities in the context of brand management.

The IT function might use this relationship to shake off its operational cost centre image.

So am I suggesting we appoint an IT function brand manager? No. In my experience CIOs struggle with branding. This is to some extent understandable given the siege conditions under which many IT functions operate. I suspect brand management doesn’t feature very highly in military academy trench warfare modules.

In a service / knowledge based economy, branding extends beyond the glossary literature and corporate sponsorship into the service creation and delivery processes (increasingly via the web).  Thus the IT function is a key element of corporate brand management.

And for that reason the IT function should report into the Chief Marketing Officer. Whilst this may be unpalatable to many of today’s ‘pre-brand’ CIOs, IT staff are likely to raise their game once it dawns on them that their role is now one of business value creation rather than technology cost containment.

CIOmpliance

I have just been involved in a series of events sponsored by PWC in respect of e-discovery.  For those unaware of the concept, which included me up until a few months ago, e-discovery relates to electronic records and documents, often in respect of their retrieval for litigation and compliance purposes.

High cost reputation damaging litigation or compliance failure impacts both lawyers and the IT function. It would appear that many organisations struggle with the communication barriers that exist between legal professionals and the IT function. This in turn has led to an intermediary function evolving to bridge the communications chasm.

The IT function really needs to ask itself why such intermediaries are required. This is a common problem across all functions that engage with IT.  Given that the IT function is supposed to be providing a service, why is there a need for the user community to construct service-interfaces in order to get what they need?

This reflects poorly on the IT function and the IT industry as a whole. CIOs who want to remain CIOs might see this as an opportunity and seize responsibility for compliance and e-discovery.  The opportunities to drive down the associated (and substantial) costs and support the organisation’s reputation management will certainly capture the boardroom’s attention more so than monologues on virtualization and the Cloud.

In the C-Suite: Waiting for Google

In my FT column I recently wrote a piece on how some of the major online players are plummeting to new depths in respect of customer service.

Click here to read my FT piece.

What do you think?

In the C-Suite: The death of meetings

Traditional meetings are generally a waste of time. However they fit nicely into online calendars. You can even have them at mealtimes; multitasking at its best no doubt. 

Why not debit the budget of each department represented at the meeting in proportion to their representation? This debit must be sufficiently painful to discourage meeting surfers and bureaucrats from just sitting in.

The number of words used by each participant is measured along with their actual contribution to progressing the meeting agenda. At the end of the meeting each participant will be scored in respect of his or her value per word.

Above a certain value-velocity they will not suffer a departmental budget cut. And at some point they will actually receive a budget credit, usually in proportion to the actions they take away from the meeting.

This is difficult to build into a traditional meeting, but will be possible in respect of online meetings (one day).

Businesses need to communicate. But traditional committee-based affairs simply slow down the decision making process and impede progress. Over time more and more decisions will be automated.

This is simply a step down that inevitable path.

CIO: Who are you protecting?

By trying to keep the plates spinning despite the swingeing budget cuts, you appear to be protecting your CFO and CEO. Why? Perhaps you are protecting your job?

But surely your role is to protect your staff. Protect them from the politics and to defend the IT function from being financually wired for failure. Without this your people will lose faith in you.

And the boardroom will not be far behind them.

Click here to read more CIO posts.

In the C-Suite: Cheaper or better

The big challenge for business leaders is to decide what business they are in. Should they focus on price or should they focus on quality? The banking industry fluctuates between the two almost on a quarterly basis. Wealth management and premium banking one minute, market share and micro finance the next.

If you focus on cheaper than the rest you are going to rely very heavily on IT. Alternatively if you want to operate at the premium end of the market you are going to have to rely very heavily on IT.

The likelihood is that market volatility will require us to fluctuate between the two. This requires business agility and this requires a similarly agile (and scalable) IT platform for your business.

Better still why not be cheaper and better (aka value for money)? If that's the plan then you better have IT at the forefront of your business strategy.

Not everyone gets it/IT? But you can be sure that your future market leaders do.

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In the C-Suite: Where IT infrastructure and business strategy meet

It is popular to regard IT infrastructure as low value, boring and a prime candidate for outsourcing given its commoditised nature. Guilty as charged. However McKinsey & Co put an interesting light on it, stating that there is a direct link between business value and IT infrastructure.

Clearly most infrastructure components are commodities, but when they are dovetailed together in an innovative manner they deliver greater security, resilience, user productivity and business agility. All characteristics that are important to your customers, particularly those that make engage via new technology channels.

So next time the CIO uses terms such as rack, virtualisation, unified, IP or netbook, don't start rotating the bezel of your watch in an impatient manner, probe her on what these can uniquely do for your customers to give your organisation an edge.

Click here to read the article synopsis.

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In the C-Suite: We need Chiropractors

It strikes me that many, though not all HR functions see people as stationery. The processes for acquiring paperclips and people appear to be much the same, process and cost-driven.

The reality is that there isn’t an issue with generation X and Y paper clips engaging. Nor is there an issue of paperclips needing to be more knowledgeable than ever to continue delivering the same level of economic output now that we are in a global marketplace.

Turning grey matter into liquid intellectual capital requires a grasp of technology. Particularly those associated with collaboration and creativity.

Both the IT and HR communities have argued forever that they are the most important function in terms of bottom line impact.  And of course they are both right. But to move HR out of a paperclip mindset and IT out of a technology mindset we need to merge the two functions.

So bring on the CHIRO – Chief Human and Information Resources Officer. It’s certainly an alternative approach.

In the C-Suite: Cost jerking

It is not clear to me that many boardroom executives know the difference between strategy and tactics when it comes to cost management. The overwhelming theme I hear from speaking to many CIOs is that the IT budget has been hit both hard and indiscriminately.

This smacks of a knee jerk reaction to the economic downturn. Cost jerking has some short-term benefits, such as quickly bringing costs into line with revenues. Usually such measures are easy to implement and appear to all concerned, apart from the recipients, as action-oriented leadership.

However tactical action rarely addresses the root cause of cost related issues. Perhaps the real issue is the need to migrate the existing business model to embrace the web?

Such tactical action usually takes no account of the associated consequences down the line. But perhaps this is not an issue if the CEO is judged on short-term performance?

Perhaps the CEO is keeping his fingers crossed that an imminent upturn will cloak the problem once reckless spending becomes fashionable again?

Thus shareholders need to discourage business leaders from being a jerk.

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