‘CIOs need to make optimum use of investment’

NEW DELHI: The slowdown has provided an ideal opportunity for chief

information officers (CIO) to demonstrate the innovative means in making the

optimum use of existing IT investments.

This was the crux of the discussion among panelists who had gathered at the

Dataquest CIO forum to discuss the role of CIOs in today's challenging

environment. The comments come at a time when CIOs have begun to play a pivotal

role in developing strategies to pull organizations through difficult times.

Realizing the importance of IT in boosting growth, enterprises have begun to

include the implementation process of new technology in their business vision.

As part of its efforts to have a seamless integration of technology, the firm is

now looking at CIOs to develop strategies to use IT in streamlining processes

and thereby add to the firm’s bottom-line. The new state of affairs has made

CIO an indispensable member to every strategic decision, the panel stated.

The job profile of CIOs has changed from the initial years, where his role

was restricted in ensuring that systems were running. The sea of change is

evident from the fact that CIOs who were then authorized to handle budgets worth

a few lakh are now handling budgets that runs into crores of Rupees.

CIOs also have a bigger clout as they are now responsible in imposing fiscal

discipline among the firm’s departments. So if a division demands any IT

investment, it has to be financed by the internal budget of the division and not

left to the IT department. The reason being that each department can then

examine the returns that its investment can bring and decide on the requirements

accordingly.

The discussion, which was part of Dataquest's CIO series, had representations

from various segments of the industry. IA director AK Rastogi, Microsoft

International IT Account Manager (Asia) Adhunik Chug, Whirlpool IT director M R

Sundaresan, Hero Honda (Info Systems) vice president S R Balasubramanian and

Ambarish Dasgupta from PriceWaterHouseCoopers were the participants at the meet.