Kathy Gibson at the IDC CIO Summit, Sandton – A CIO is someone who reports to the CEO of the company – and, if you don’t, you are not a CIO.
This is according to Len de Villiers, group CIO at Telkom, who says this truly the bottom line.
“Proper CIOs talk 50% of the time about business strategy and business requirements, deliverables and priorities.
“The technical discussions do take place, but the majority of the CIO’s discussion is in the C-suite,” De Villiers says.
The CIO paradox, he adds, is as follows:
* Be a visionary but also a pragmatist;
* Be a strategist and an operational player;
* Be an investor of the future but a cost cutter for today;
* Simplify but manage increased complexity driven by customisation and personalisation; and
* Move fast but plan large project implementations carefully.
“Within the organisation, everybody likes technology – everyone is a CIO who knows everything about a laptop,” De Villiers says. “But that’s not IT.”
In addition, CIOs are faced with changing job roles, and it’s important to be in most of the discussions, because the fabric of what they do touches every aspect of the organisation.
“So you have to move around and expand your role as needed,” De Villiers says.
CIOs have to manage not only the strategic role but the full gamut of operational roles as well, not an easy job to manage.
But De Villiers says there are some metrics that can be used to find if the CIO is being successful:
* You have strong and trusted relationships with all business units;
* You deliver all prioritised IT projects on committed timelines and within budget;
* You meet all signed SLAs for production systems with business and customers;
* You achieve a positive e-NPS score by the end of 2015;
* You achieve a customer satisfaction survey result of 3A;
* You reduce the vendor/supplier landscape from x to y suppliers;
* You simplify, standardise, optimise, consolidate and automate the IT landscape and is environment;
* You develop a strong performance-driven culture and behaviour among all IT staff;
* You have one EDW with one version of the truth; and
* You can attract, develop and retain top IT talent for all IT positions and functions.