As the economy emerges from the recession, companies find themselves in a transitional period as they move away from tough cost-cutting measures towards productivity and efficiency.
This is the view of Professor Pete Janse van Vuuren, executive partner at research firm Gartner Africa, speaking at the ITWeb Doing More With Less conference held in Bryanston, yesterday.
Janse van Vuuren argued that this transitional period gives enterprises and IT the opportunity to reposition themselves and exploit the tough corrective measures taken during the recession.
“The CIO's leadership role faced challenges in 2009, but the best CIO leaders met those challenges. As a group, CIOs see no future in returning IT to the past. However, redefining IT's role, contribution, and structure requires a new level of leadership, as IT transitions from managing resources to creating results,” explained Janse van Vuuren.
He advised CIOs to expect IT to shift its focus from cost and consolidation to innovation and competitive advantage. “CIOs have aspired to this shift for years, but economic, strategic and technological changes have only recently made it realistic,” noted Janse van Vuuren.
He said CIOs need to concentrate on raising enterprise effectiveness through focused projects and services; leveraging current reporting relationships so executives can sponsor CIO involvement outside of IT; and transitioning IT management practices and metrics from a technical to business orientation.
The transition has placed a premium on productivity, and so the CIO's technology strategy must support more collaboration and innovation capabilities, he offered. To this end, IT and business alignment is key. “IT must put itself into business and IT executives must be seen as business executives,” argued Janse van Vuuren.
The focus of CIOs needs to be on several issues, including how the enterprise will work differently to create additional capacity with the same level of resources; what structural changes are needed to be made in the IT organisation to raise productivity and service levels; and how, as the CIO, to increase resource flexibility and focus IT on changing priorities, he stated.
“During the recession, CIOs demonstrated their ability to control costs. In 2010, their agenda should be based on delivering both productivity and capability. Raising productivity, creating capability, and realising the opportunities of the recovery involve continued change in the enterprise and IT,” concluded Janse van Vuuren.
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