Understanding CIO
The prominence of CIO has risen greatly as IT has become a more important part of any business today. CIO is a title or a role held by people of Technical Decision Maker. The composition of CIO’s job is fairly consistent whether a wide or a smaller spectrum — they spend their time communicating with senior management peers, IT staff, IT vendors, and business partners. CIO’s typically reports to the CEO’s. CIO’s job is similar to COO & they have a good relation. But CIO neither likes to report to COO nor to a CFO with whom he has somewhat strained relationship. The CIO role is also sometimes used interchangeably with the CTO role, although they may be slightly different.
CIO in an enterprise is responsible for the IT systems that support enterprise goals. As IT systems have become more important, the CIO has come to be viewed in many organizations as a key contributor in formulating strategic goals. Typically, the CIO in a large enterprise delegates technical decisions to employees more familiar with details. Usually, a CIO proposes the IT an enterprise will need to achieve its goals and then works within a budget to implement the plan. Typically, a CIO is involved with analyzing and reworking existing business processes, with identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, with reshaping the enterprise’s physical infrastructure and network access, and with identifying and exploiting the enterprise’s knowledge resources. Many CIOs head the enterprise’s efforts to integrate the Internet and the Web into both its long-term strategy and its immediate business plans.
The CIO role has in some cases gets expanded to become the chief knowledge officer. When both positions are present in an organization, the CIO is generally responsible for processes and practices supporting the flow of information, whereas the CTO is generally responsible for technology infrastructure.
CIO’s greatest weakness is that they don’t have a strong business background. They understand processes, but their view is tactical. The technical proficiency that made reach the position, is not needed in the job, so they convert it into understanding the options for solving business problems.
No specific qualification is typical of CIOs in general; every CIO position has its own specific job description. CIOs’ leadership capabilities, business acumen and strategic perspectives have taken precedence over technical skills. It is now quite common for CIOs to be appointed from the business side of the organization.
Communicating with CIOs is not just what medium, but rather what motivation. The most easy way to approach them is through motivation. Motivation for a CIO is like “this will be worth your time.” CIO’s will come to a webinar, listen to a podcast, even leave the office for a conference or seminar if they are completely convinced that what they gain will be worth the time it costs them. That’s an equation with two terms: the amount of motivation and the amount of time. Some mighty powerful motivation shall motivate them to listen to a one hour podcast and fill out a ten question survey. If the motivator is little less powerful, trim the podcast back to five minutes, make the survey the two questions you really, really, really want answered. Motivation equals carrot, whether it’s some clearly valuable knowledge, a wonderful experience, or meeting someone they’d like to know. You’ll do a much better job of honing the offer if you think of it in its basest terms–bribe (carrot). Every CIO in the industry knows events well. A vendor just needs to do them often enough that they don’t forget, and make everything the same so they know what to expect.
CIO’s believe they can be more strategic if they had time to think, but they’ll never get it because they’re terrible at delegation — CIO’s really don’t have a second-in-command. This means that CIO’s have to listen to their seniors, and even tech gurus way down the org chart. There isn’t a filter between them and him — they influence him strongly. It also means CIO needs outside expertise, because they have to understand the business case for anything they recommend, and they do not share or delegate final decision-making on major initiatives.
CIO’s biggest priority is enterprise integration. It’s where they spend the largest share of their budget. CIO’s drag lot of legacy applications along, with Web integration and interface. CIO will not listen to the scream of every department for new hardware. But anyone who can show an immediate ROI for a new technology will get consideration. The bar for ROI is raised though. Vendors talking about profitability through increased efficiency better have rock-solid proof.
CIO’s greatest pain is hiring and retaining the right people with the right experience. His budget is tight, he’s tired of hearing he has to do more with less, and the priorities of his budget don’t match what the organization needs — but he can’t fix that without wasting money and breaking promises. He needs to see short payback for any investment — two years is a bad joke, two months is more like it. The legacy systems are driving him crazy, but he can’t rip and replace. He may not be hands-on anymore, and his CEO hired him for his communications and leadership skills. But when something doesn’t work, it’s his fault.
A CIO is always at a blame for the CRM system his predecessor selected which is still eating budget and producing little more than irritated salespeople. I think, you as a CIO will agree to this statement. CEO’s admin think its CIO & his team at fault when sleazy spam gets through the filter into the inbox. Though CIO is a C-level executive, the performance of the most tactical, minor, trivial piece of IT infrastructure gets attached to his coattails.
The keys to getting through to CIO are:
- Sliding past the gatekeeper with something she doesn’t dare toss, grabbing his attention, and then keeping every communication as relevant and brief as possible.
- He doesn’t want to be sold, he wants to be smart.
- He won’t talk to a salesperson until he’s on a level playing field, and he’s comfortable with his own knowledge. Your choices are to wait for him gather it, let it come from competitors, or set the playing field and stack the deck.
- Give him condensed nuggets of highly relevant expertise and he’ll stay engaged. Get ahead of the selling cycle and the doors close.
- Strategy in a can. Prove to him that you can make up for his greatest weakness (without pointing it out to him) and he’s interested.
CIO are true believer in technology, but they have often been burned, and have watched their company suffer. He has laid off friends and people he respected. He’s shot projects he loved. You can’t take his sense of fiscal responsibility lightly. He needs to see clear alignment with the capabilities his company needs, a clear return on investment, and an adoption process he can manage with limited and possibly sub-optimal resources.
You reach CIOs with a piece of startling creative. As soon as they see it their attention must be captured. It must be almost psychically relevant to elicit response. Pushing them to micro-sites can be highly successful, but once they land, the relevance must start high and increase rapidly or you lose them. It’s literally like fishing with an artificial fly. Not only must the bait be attractive, but also every aspect of presentation must be perfect. Each piece of information they yield must be used immediately to increase the relevance of the conversation you’re crafting.
Pain points and critical issues are not the best way to access them (though it can be a component) . Every marketer pounds on their tight budgets , the difficulty of getting exactly the right people, how important reliability and short dev cycles are today. There’s no opportunity there to stand out. You can reach them most effectively through their weaknesses: o they don’t delegate well, o they don’t have time to be strategic, o and they are not as experienced in business as their CxO peers.
CIOs can’t be sold until they feel smart. Since they can’t effectively delegate they need to gather expertise themselves. If you feed them condensed, relevant expertise they will value your communications. The most valued information feels more like it is aimed at the CEO. A sweepstake for an appropriate but small cool item always works.
CIO is easy to target, tricky to reach, and hard to hold.
Posted on March 26th, 2008 by Vikram Kole
Filed under: CIO Community, View Points & Perspective
Hello reader’s..,
Some basics on CIO…
Chief Information Officer (CIO) is a job title commonly given to the person in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. As information technology and systems have become more important, the CIO has come to be viewed in many organizations as a key contributor in formulating strategic goals. In many companies, the CIO reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). In some companies, the CIO sits on the executive board. Typically, the CIO in a large enterprise delegates technical decisions to employees more familiar with details. Usually, a CIO proposes the information technology an enterprise will need to achieve its goals and then works within a budget to implement the plan.
Typically, a CIO is involved with analyzing and reworking existing business processes, with identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, with reshaping the enterprise’s physical infrastructure and network access, and with identifying and exploiting the enterprise’s knowledge resources. Many CIOs head the enterprise’s efforts to integrate the Internet and the World Wide Web into both its long-term strategy and its immediate business plans.
Very nicely put piece. But I think that a CIO although he needs results in short term, he has to plan for the long term as well. If a certain software works right now perfectly within the set budget, then go for it, but in the long run they might have to upgrade to a more robust and scalable version. So, a CIO needs to distance himself from the immediate benefits and align to the long term goals of the organizations as well.