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Different flavours of different CIOs

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CIOL Bureau
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PUNE, INDIA:Not all fingers are alike, and same goes for CIOs too. Depending on the nature of business, technology-savviness, geography, market, user-maturity and customer imperative; every CIO behaves differently be it in their openness towards IT investments, new technologies or in the pace of IT adoption cycle.

As Sam Santhosh, CEO, MD Calsoft, a product engineering and ERP specialist, that so far had its forte in the US and Europe, but has now started putting feet in markets like Sri Lanka, Middle East and Egypt, shares, geography-wise, CIOs behaviour and approach changes a lot. “In these new markets one may find that CIOs are not that savvy or have a different approach towards IT. They are concerned about questions like, “Will it work?” or “Would this mean, everything has to be ripped off?” etc.” What works in such cases, is adopting a partnership mode with CIOs instead of the typical client-customer relationship.

K V Shashi Kiran, VP, Business Development, QSIT, an expert in security consulting and projects distills from his experience that government CIOs, specially in India, have a different approach. “Awareness is a challenge and the initial phases of the cycle are very gradual and marked with slow adoption. In areas like security, they have to wake up the new challenges. Information is critical, be it the quantifiable kid, as seen in a financial organisation or the non-quantifiable kind in a defence establishment, which is still strategic and serious.” As he shares, government CIOs may be slow at the onset, but once they come on tracks, they are pretty robust and sturdy in their approach.

That’s a similar experience that even vendors like Santhosh had. “Once the investments yield results, the relationship in geographies like ME are much longer than in the US for instance. “Getting in there could be easier but the kick-out can be as fast. Here once you get in, you are playing for long.”