Okay, if you’re a small to mid-size company, you probably don’t have a Chief Information Officer, but you should.
While you may still conceive of your business as operating in the “real” world, almost everything your business does consists of information that is being managed.
IT is seen by most business leaders as a tool, like a hammer, to use to do other things. But now that everything exists in the dataspace, from corporate communications to your company’s customers and vendors to your inventory and manufacturing, business leaders need to understand that IT is not a tool, it is how you do business.
A question I like to ask clients is “how much would it be worth to get a list of your biggest competitor’s customers, what they bought, and when?” Aside from the moral issues, the answer is never surprising.
Somewhere between “priceless,” and “a lot.”
And yet the same executives don’t give real thought to the security of their own information. Everything connected to the internet, from your vendor’s API to a web form for your customers is a potential target. For this reason alone, your company needs someone in the CIO role constantly on the lookout for security and data management developments.
A CIO can help you digitally transform your company by continually assessing your data needs for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Business Intelligence (BI), and Customer Relations Management (CRM). CIOs can revolutionize not just back office processes but also customer facing engagement and development initiatives.
At your next staff meeting, make it a priority to discuss who your digital transformation officer will be. At ATC, we recommend you find an in-house leader who’s interested in what IT can do, and give that person the tools to build a robust datascape for your business.
Of course, it would be best for you to hire a full-time, creative, CIO, but you’ll have to get in line. There are an estimated 200,000 CIO positions unfilled in the US alone.