2012 Priorities for the CIO - Focus on Requirements
With the year coming to a closing, organizations are wrapping up remaining projects and starting to set priorities and objectives for 2012. The year 2012 seems to have the same mandate from 2011, which is doing more with less. Below is a list of priorities that CIOs should focus on to be successful in this coming year.
Optimize Cost and Value – Gartner predicts that through 2015, a recession era mentality among CEOs will ensure a policy of paying for future investments from the cost savings obtained from existing IT operations. Cost/value optimization will be key in moving forward through 2012. According to Gartner, cost optimization means more than just reducing costs, it means:
- Process improvement, reorganization and new methods
- Implementing cost saving technologies with the business
- Identifying and executing on opportunities to reduce IT Costs
- Getting the best pricing and terms for IT purchases
Become more Agile - In a recent CIO survey, the number one concern of business technology executives is that they were unable to meet business goals and IT systems were slow to be implemented. When IT systems become the bottlenecks for new product launches, capabilities and expansion, the company’s inability to beat small competitors becomes clear. CIOs must find ways to make their organizations more agile and responsive to the dynamic business environment.
Align business with IT - Business and IT should not be mentioned as separate entities. CIO’s must assume responsibilities and be thought leaders on how to improve business processes through automation. CIO’s should focus on areas such as business process management, procurement, supply chain management and being integrally involved in new product launches and development.
New Growth Initiatives -. CIO’s can no longer afford to spend most of their time in maintaining existing systems. They must find new growth initiatives – IT programs that open up new markets and businesses. CIO’s must break out of the 80/20 spending trap and spend less on maintenance and more on new technologies. CIO’s should explore application rationalization to see how to simplify their application portfolios and eliminate or replace low value applications.
Prepare for the Post PC era - PC worldwide sales have peaked and are on the decline. Many companies are turning to tablets and other mobile computing devices for efficiency and cost reduction. This trend will continue into the future. PCs seem to be going the way of vacuum tubes and typewriters. This means many things for the CIO. First, CIO’s should focus on delivering IT services and not managing desktops. The next point is to embrace the consumeration of IT. Many companies are coming to terms with the fact that employees are increasingly using personal devices and applications. So, CIO’s need to structure clear policies about which will be managed by the company or reimbursed by the company and which will not. CIO’s need to embrace employee’s personal technology.
Improve Collaboration. - CIO’s of Ford, Procter & Gamble and Cisco encourage collaboration between remote employees and supply chain partners. Collaboration
increases productivity and innovation. The emergence of unified communication and collaboration tools help people work together to increase productivity, shorten cycle times, share knowledge, and improve productivity.
Embrace Cloud Computing – No doubt you are seeing more and more information about the value of moving IT services “into the Cloud.” The Cloud provides significant opportunities for cost reduction and may materially change how you do business. According to a new book,
CloudSourcing the Corporation, by Ben Trowbridge, some of the promises of cloud sourcing and cloud adoption are:
- Faster time to innovation
- Access to a dizzying array of interesting of business applications
- Significantly lower IT costs
- Ability to adopt better functionality with fewer headaches for user
- Better security
- More flexibility to ramp up or ramp down resources
- Lower capital provisioning
- Rapid provisioning
Leverage Social Media - Customers, employees, partners and suppliers should be talking about your company in the social media. Websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and twitter are examples. Companies need to monitor and participate in such discussions and forums. Becoming involved in social media can help improve customer service and increase sales.
Business Intelligence and Analytics - The term ‘Big Data’ has emerged as a way of describing the ever-increasing volumes of data being generated by businesses. BI is undoubtedly important to businesses looking to make best use of big data, but the right system to store and manage data is a factor too. However, the size and volume of business data is to an extent irrelevant; it is how you use the data and the insight you glean from it that matters. For 2012, we will continue to see business units drive adoption of BI, not IT as has been the case in the past.
Focus on Requirements – According to Standish Group research, poor requirements and the lack of user participation are the leading causes for project failure. Further, incomplete or inaccurate requirements cost companies billions of dollars in terms of project rework. A typical project is estimated to have forty percent rework; of this, 70-80% is estimated to be caused by poor or incomplete requirements. This means that up to 28% of the cost of a project resulted from poor requirements; this is huge!!! Good requirements have the potential to significantly reduce project costs, align IT with the business, and help organization deliver on the initiatives 1-9 above.
In order to effectively manage these priorities, CIO’s should evaluate whether their IT organization has the right tools in place to develop and manage their priorities and requirements. After all, CIO’s are the pioneers of innovation and change within organizations; they should empower their own teams to achieve greater efficiency by giving them the right tools to succeed. The Enfocus Solutions Requirement Suite™ offers CIO’s a solution that will fit their business needs without breaking their wallet or taking years of implementation to go live.
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