“Governance is like a diet: everybody thinks it’s a good idea, but hardly anybody does it well and nobody is successful.  Effective IT governance starts with understanding the strategic direction of the larger organization and then having a clear IT strategy—that people buy into—that aligns with that.” —University CIO

The topic of IT governance has always been one of great importance to the successful operation of the corporate technology function.  But in today’s environment it is even more critical for driving strategic opportunity for the business.  Well-designed and executed enterprise IT governance makes roles, responsibilities, and paths to execution transparent and creates the platform for generating business value.  Forward-thinking CIOs are exploring ways to take IT governance to the next level—to enable their businesses to pull ahead in this hyper-competitive, global business environment and position IT in a leadership role delivering technology-enabled innovation.  They are also experimenting with relaxing governance standards to foster innovation in high-growth areas of the business, by allowing the business to take responsibility for the added risk.

Center CIO members across industries and geographies shared their insights on the obstacles and opportunities that exist for CIOs in establishing or evolving their IT governance models and mechanisms in order to cement IT’s role as a strategic business partner.  The following themes emerged from the qualitative research:

• Integration between enterprise IT governance and the larger organization’s governance structures is critically important
• Strategic alignment and cost control are the two biggest benefits of mature IT governance
• CIOs are working hard to figure out how to create new aspects of IT governance to support today’s business needs: innovation, speed, and agility
• Change management is the single biggest challenge when introducing new aspects of IT governance
• IT governance processes must be transparent and inclusive

Read this white paper to gain peer advice and insight on approaches that CIOs are implementing to take a leadership role in IT governance and deliver benefits to the business.

If you do not see the file below, click here.

“As CIO, I am able to leverage tools to mine data and sit in an advisory role for the business.  That’s transformational, and that’s what business is looking for in these times.  I can partner with the business to create unique opportunity to differentiate the organization with customers.” — CIO, financial services company

Customer centricity is increasingly critical to strategies for corporate growth, elevating the analysis of customer data to a top priority for most enterprises.  CIOs and their IT organizations – with their end-to-end view of the enterprise – are uniquely qualified to locate dispersed and disparate customer data, create effective analytics tools to interpret that data, and deliver meaningful customer information throughout the enterprise.  However the CIO is not the owner of the data, but a custodian of the data and this stewardship requires CIOs to build strategic relationships with those in customer facing functions to develop effective customer analytics strategies, tools and processes.

The Center for CIO Leadership interviewed CIO members across industries and geographies to explore the opportunities and obstacles that exist for CIOs around customer analytics.  These IT leaders shared the following insights and lessons required to advance and lead in the enterprise:

• Analytics are critical to creating a clear view of the end customer that companies lack, yet desperately desire.
• IT can—and will—lead the way on customer analytics.
• Collaboration is critical.
• Traditional customer management tools are table stakes.
• Social media is emerging as a potentially important source of unstructured customer data.

Read this white paper to gain peer advice and insight on partnering with C-suite peers to transform customer data into business intelligence and corporate growth.

If this topic interests you, you may also be interested in attending the CIO Virtual Roundtable on June 22, Getting Value from Social Media and Unstructured Data: The New Unified View.

Read the white paper attached below.  If you do not see the file below, click here.

I recently read a Forbes article Solving National IT Issues: We must address national strategic issues from a technology--not political--standpoint, written by CIO blogger, Mike Schaffner.  While I respect Mike’s point that issues cannot be addressed from a political standpoint, I think he is missing the mark slightly, and doing a disservice to all CIOs.  The more I read and reflected on the article, the more it seemed to me that this is a movie that we have seen many times before.

Forget, for a moment, that we are talking about the CIO of the United States of America.  Imagine the more familiar context of a huge enterprise that is 200+ years old, complete with policies, procedures and methodologies – ways and means of doing business that give new meaning to the term "legacy systems", not to mention business silos.  Could there possibly exist a more complex (polite term for dysfunctional) environment in which to effectively transact business?

Now bring a newly appointed CIO into a newly created position – enterprise CIO, and by the way, define the newly created position in a way where it has an incredible sphere of influence (reporting to the CEO of one of the world's largest enterprises) yet has limited to no real authority, i.e. the line of business (silo) CIOs do not actually report to the new enterprise CIO.  When all of that dust settles, we have a glorious position with lots of responsibility (or at least expectation) and limited to no authority.

Now surround all of this with the worst economic condition that any of us (c-suite included) have seen in our lifetime.

Given that scenario, do you know anyone that would focus on why digital rights management is an important priority?  Not to make excuses – in spirit, Mike Schaffner has focused on a good set of important technology issues.  His list of strategic priorities is an excellent one.  His observation that Vivek Kundra has largely focused on "keeping the lights on and reducing expenses" (my words, not his) is, from what I have seen, correct.  At the last government CIO roundtable that I attended with the IEG and Public CIO Magazine, Vivek Kundra in fact presented his IT agenda and was most proud of the fact that he eliminated $80 billion in government IT projects that appeared to be either misdirected, not needed or so far off the tracks that they could not be saved.  He was able to then both cut expenses and re-direct a portion of the savings to other more productive efforts.

Sound like a familiar theme?  This is an example (on steroids) of why we created the Center for CIO Leadership – to help CIOs rise above the role of IT cost center manager and to transform themselves into better business (or government) people.  While I don't think that we ever envisioned transforming an enterprise quite as large and complex as the government of the United States, I believe that our understanding of the challenges, the opportunities and, to a growing extent, some of the solutions that we are developing are completely applicable.

If you were CIO of the US, what would you do?  Would you focus more on strategy, technology or politics?  Feel free to respond and share your opinions and suggestions…

This 10-minute podcast interview with the Center's Executive Director, Harvey Koeppel, covers the topic of Becoming a Business-Savvy CIO.  This is just one of the topics covered in the recently published Center white paper, Beyond the Crossroads: How Business-Savvy CIOs Enable Top-Performing Enterprises and How Top-Performing Enterprises Leverage Business-Savvy CIOs.

This podcast is the first in a series of podcast interviews with Harvey Koeppel.  The series will cover both topics in the white paper as well as other content relevant to the CIO.