CIOs new priorities: Go for Growth!

Over
the past few years, strategic CIOs have been


hamstrung

by the tight economy, which has left them

mired in a bog of slow-growth and no growth IT

budgets. As a result, their focus has been

largely on harnessing technology to improve

operations, streamline processes, and growing

costs out of everything they do.

Today, with the economic winds shifting in a more northerly

direction, however,

many organizations are now expanding. The new management

imperative emphasizes top-line initiatives. Companies are finding

there's no more effective way to spur growth than by leveraging IT

to expand market share.

"A successful CIO will constantly be aware of the potential

of IT and move the

company to competitive advantage,"said Varun Jha, CIO at Tata Steel

in the June 2005 Optimize ."It's a responsibility to the company and

the shareholders and

everyone has to contribute, including IT and the CIO," added

Ben Holder, CIO at Unifi Corp.at the June 2005 Optimize "Roundtable:

The New CIO Leadership." "If you don't, you're

marginalized." This

shift from defensively squeezing out costs to offensively growing the

business is dramatically illustrated in the latest findings of the annual

Optimize "Defining

the CIO" survey. In interviews with 700 IT and corporate

executives - including more than 400 CIOs, CTOs, and vice presidents

of IS/IT- at companies in North America, a new and aggressive mandate

for growth has been set forth for the CIO.

CIOs and other C-level executives report that revenue growth has

replaced streamlining

operations and reducing costs as the single-most important

priority for their organizations in 2005, the survey indicates. As a

result, companies are requiring their IT operations to contribute to revenue

growth, instead of accepting their traditional role as a cost center. CIOs

are being asked to find ways to expand market share and improve customer

satisfaction, as well. For CIOs, the new imperative is the ability

to present and quantify information-driven business initiatives

that afford bottom-line payoffs.

CIOs' four key endeavors

Equally important, the survey further reported that CIOs today

are sharing their time among four endeavors. These include:

- Responding to greater demands from the business;

- Dealing with higher customer expectations;

- Managing technical complexity; and

- Fostering increased coordination among internal business

units.

Finding ways to enhance customer satisfaction is a primary

goal for CIOs, and increasingly their performance reviews

are based on it. " I'm held accountable for the satisfaction of

my internal customers, and at the same time, the company

is looking at the satisfaction of our external customers,"

said Gallo's Kushar.  "It all translates directly to me. If there's

a technology issue between a sales rep and a customer, it's

going to reflect on my satisfaction levels as well."

Improving customer satisfaction, especially as it impacts

increased revenue generation, is a key

focus for CIOs in every type of

business and industry. "By further improving the analysis

of data that our systems collect on customers, employees,

business operations, and other areas, I hope to contribute

to increases in revenue generation, as well as continued improvement

in customer retention," reported Carol Pride,

CIO at Caesars Corp. in the March 2005 issue of Optimize.

For more

on this interesting white paper, Defining

the CIO

Source: Optimize

Companies are requiring their IT operations to contribute

to revenue growth.