In any organization, the title of a Chief Information Officer (CIO) is generally given to a senior executive for keeping an eye over information technology and computer systems for leveraging the enterprise’s requirements, helping it to achieve its goals. Actually, CIO has to achieve operational excellence, driving IT transformation through benchmarks, while ensuring the vendor’s portfolio, budget, etc.
One of the significant expectations from a CIO is to be a change agent within the organization. The role of IT has just changed over the years. It is now perceived as a key business driver, rather than being only an enabler for technologies. V. C. Gopalratnam, CIO – Globalization and Vice-President – Information Technology, Cisco, said, “These are tough times and businesses globally are looking at ways to innovate holistically to gain a competitive edge from every aspect possible, including IT. Keeping this in perspective, the CIO not only has to be on the constant lookout for emerging technologies but also ensure whatever they are adopting gels with the organization as a whole, including its people and business, and help unlock the company’s full potential.”
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| VC Gopalratnam CIO Globalisation and VP Information Technology Cisco | Sandeep Kothari Vice President (Information Technology), Travel Food Services Pvt. Ltd. | Amit Chatterjee Country Director Software HP India | Ckumaran Senior Manager (Information Technology) Syndicate Bank |
In today’s dynamic world, apart from taking care of all the IT requirements of the organization, CIOs have to contribute to revenue generation and increase operational efficiency through innovations. In fact, the role of the CIO is changing with the changing organizational requirements. Sandeep Kothari, Vice-President (Information Technology), Travel Food Services Pvt. Ltd, said, “The CIOs are no longer evaluated only on the efficiency of the data centers but also on how a CIO can use his technological knowledge to gain competitive advantage for businesses.”
C. Kumaran, Senior Manager (Information Technology), Syndicate Bank, believes that in an institution there are many talented people. Each may be talented in different portfolios. CIOs are the coordinating factor for these talents and hence they act as the driving force for business development as well as innovation.
However, CIOs need standardized, efficient tools to measure, benchmark and improve performance. Today, most performance indicators are collected across disparate systems in different ways. Organizations manage IT performance through a combination of spreadsheets, reports and scorecards, which are often manually collected. Besides these, they also collect key performance indicators across disparate applications, operations, security and information investments. This means the information they have about their overall IT performance system is incomplete.
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| Sandeep Parikh Director IT Microsoft India | Ravishankar President - India Operations Nevales Networks | Sanjay Mehta Technology Entrepreneur and CEO MAIA Intelligence | Shankaranarayanan Director - Information technology, AEGON Religare Life Insurance Co. Ltd |
The HP IT Performance Suite CIO Edition captures, aggregates and displays a diverse set of critical performance metrics, giving CIOs and IT leaders the visibility they need to better manage and measure the performance of IT. “The fundamental principle of the HP IT Performance Suite is to provide business leaders with a comprehensive IT performance system to help IT perform better. The HP IT Performance Suite helps IT leaders gain the right insights to make the right decisions to optimize IT and unlock more innovation dollars,” said Amit Chatterjee, Country Director – Software, HP India.
Complex business scenario bringing newer challenges
With new technologies emerging almost every day, business is becoming complex. In such an unexpected business environment, CIOs across industries are bracing up with novel challenges like Mobility, BYOD, Big Data, etc. Sanjay Mehta, Technology Entrepreneur & CEO, MAIA Intelligence, opines, “I believe that CIOs are not just ready but are bringing the change in the organization, from Mobility to BYOD and from Business Intelligence to Big Data. They are the Change Warriors who are driving business innovations and new technologies while allowing the flexibility and managing IT independence.”
Intending to stay current with newer technologies, Microsoft has a team that works around innovation under the leadership of Sandeep Parikh, Director – IT, Microsoft India, where Microsoft does innovate around new technologies like social computing, Mobility and Cloud. Microsoft actually is taking advantage of all these technologies and solutions to stay ahead of the technology trends and technology curve.
As far as Nevales is concerned, it has a strong customer database and keeps a collective track of client’s requirements, feedback and suggestions and benchmarks their performance continuously to enhance the user’s experience. Throwing light on the current market conditions, Ravishankar, President – India Operations, Nevales Networks, expressed his views. He said, “Today, it has become imperative for every organization to find newer and innovative ways to perform their operations efficiently. As IT is the most powerful force for transforming business, IT leaders should leverage on the opportunities and be innovative to create greater business value.”
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| Devendra Taneja Director PC Solutions Pvt. Ltd | Praveen Chaudhary Chief Information Officer Uflex Ltd | Chandan Sinha CIO Jindal Saw Ltd |
What to choose: Standardization or Innovation?
In simple words, innovation is how you make future technology relevant today and implement it, whereas standardization is how you continue using current technology for tomorrow. According to V. C. Gopalratnam, “Managing this balance is an important task for a CIO and he constantly needs to innovate while keeping in view the standards to ensure business continuity.”
Innovation is the first step and gradually standardization comes into picture. Innovation refers to something new and in terms of business, it is catalyst for growth. How an organization deals with new ideas, processes, products, etc can make a huge difference. “Standardization is the process of developing and implementing process standards. When we standardize, we try to increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of an existing product or service,” said Ravi Shankar of Nevales Networks.
In 2009, AEGON Religare launched online life insurance space. Launching online was an innovation that AEGON brought to the industry with focus on protection business alone, with every other company following the same. Shankaranarayanan, Director – Information Technology, AEGON Religare Life Insurance Co. Ltd, said, “Having come up with an innovation, we expanded the platform not only for protection, but to investments, health, etc, thereby providing the customer huge range, thereby giving efficiency for us on this platform.”
According to Sandeep Parikh of Microsoft India, “There is a huge difference between standardization and innovation. Standardization is just standardizing the way you operate in such a fashion in that consistently time after time. Innovation is something totally different. It is actually the opposite of standardization. In other words, innovation in doing the same stuff, but is a far more optimal, faster, agile, cost-effective and efficient manner.”
So, it is absolutely true to say that the CIO of an organization has to be strategically innovative and drive the learning curve up for the organization. However, in a bid to remain on top in business, one needs to be updated for every opportunity for new technological innovations in the industry. Devendra Taneja, Director, PC Solutions Pvt. Ltd, said, “Our IT team keeps on attending the seminars/events being organized by our technology partners. We always welcome the innovative ideas from our dedicated team of IT and business personnel.”
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Budget Management for CIOs
Budget management is an integral part of business management. Tough economic conditions are indeed challenging and the IT budget over the last few years has been broadly flat. This is where a CIO needs to exercise innovation and explore how more can be achieved with what he has. Moreover, it is a good time to review and bring focus back on important programmes that are keys for achieving organization’s strategic initiatives. Keeping this in perspective, the CIO not only has to be on the constant lookout for emerging technologies but also ensure whatever they are adopting gels with the organization as a whole including its people and business, and helps unlock the company’s full potential. Praveen Chaudhary, Chief Information Officer, Uflex Ltd, informed, “We assess the IT requirements of our organization in view of the latest and upcoming technology available for sustainable growth of the organization. As such, we always give top priority to the innovations required in Information Technology to remain on top in the sphere of business targets.”
Successful IT Implementation
Intending to gain more revenue and excel in performance, different CIOs and IT heads have implemented business strategies in their own ways. As far as the IT firm Cisco is concerned, it has a very successful programme called “Cisco on Cisco” where all Cisco technologies are first tried and tested within the Cisco Enterprise environment by Cisco IT. Cisco IT is the poster child for Cisco products and technologies. Cisco successfully implemented the BYOD policy in 2009 and since then it has proved very beneficial for the organization and its employees.
For PC Solutions, adoption of private cloud and setting up of public cloud like “Efficloud” are suitable examples of successful implementation.
Besides the IT industry, CIOs of other sectors like telecom, hospitality, education, banking, etc have also successfully implemented IT strategies. Uflex Limited has successfully implemented the ERP in its complex structure of organization integrating Procurement, stores, production process, production planning, dispatch, customer relationships etc, in one platform.
As a CTO, Abhijit Chatterjee of C-Zentrix has implemented a method for integrating leads for business from multiple sources – web, email, messenger, channel partners, phone calls and making it work together with the Leading CRM, Support CRM and Licensing System. It helps the company to reduce time to reach potential customers and provide enhanced level of service to them.
Challenges before CIOs
The new generation is progressive and extremely tech-savvy. Thus, IT would become totally object oriented. Chandan Sinha, CIO, Jindal Saw Ltd, opines, “Information revolution has been a constant phenomenon and technologies like Cloud and Big Data need to evolve to provide information ‘Right Here and Right Now’.”
Finally...
CIOs not only have to meet challenges that come their way but also anticipate them so that they can be tackled head on. They have to identify, develop and support next-generation solutions, thus meeting the needs of enterprise users. Besides these, CIOs also need to keep pace with the latest developments, including social media movements, cloud and mobile computing and Big Data that have taken the market by storm.
satinder@varindia.com
