Introduction – Executive Summary
The office of the CIO, first proposed in 1980, has finally come of age.
But why has it taken so long, and what particular demands does modern manufacturing place on those in the vanguard of re-imagining technology’s role? In this executive briefing, we examine the role of the Chief Information Officer, touching briefly on the key steps of what should be their journey from the computer suite to the boardroom. Over five sections, we look at Improvers, Transformers and Inspirers, mapping their skills, talents and experience against the needs of industry. We discuss the place and purpose of technology in the fiercely competitive global market. Lastly, we propose a 5-point plan to help the business meet its goals–and to help the CIO mature into a new form of business leader
Cre8tive Technology & Design (www.ctnd.com) will be posting a five part series on How Technology is Inspiring a New Breed of CIO in Manufacturing
Part 4 – Earning the right to lead: a five-point plan
1. Support the future of the business through innovation
The CIO needs to drive the future of the business through innovation–new technologies that breathe new life into essential but stagnating processes.
This is the Transformer element of the role, and the goal here is to speed up processes and increase the velocity of the business, while cutting out waste and focusing on operational excellence.
However, there’s a balance to be maintained.
So for the remainder of the time, it is business as usual for the Improver with ‘keeping the lights on’ activities–managing the existing IT environment to ensure business continuity, while having a keen eye on continually reducing costs.
2. Solve business problems with technology
As the CIO becomes increasingly Transformer-centric the focus on innovation becomes more acute.
At this stage, the CIO starts to be more actively involved in strategy setting, enabling flexibility and change. Today’s CIO anticipates and solves business problems with IT–not just solving IT problems. A key aspect of the role is to provide a broad technology agenda.
This should be designed to help the business benefit from leading edge applications; and from the alignment of the IT and business strategies. By now, the CIO should understand the need for greater visibility. A CIO should be able to access, extract and proactively use data to raise business analysis to new heights for strategic decision making. This is a first–and essential–step to enabling the business to be more reactive to market dynamics.
3. Use technology to drive cultural shifts
At this stage, the CIO will have a good understanding of how technology can also help to drive cultural shifts and be a catalyst to transform the organizational mind-set towards collaboration.
And it’s not just internal collaboration, although an important part of the role is to evangelize the team on how technology can deliver more value to the internal organization.
In simple terms, a CIO applies technology to increase productivity, while at the same time reducing cost and time to market.
The real skill comes in recognizing opportunities to extend collaboration to the company’s supply chain, and to the external customer–fostering better service, in order to deliver better service.
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