CIOs generally lack confidence in the face of business development responsibilities

After years of business training, the chief information officer has accumulated a wealth of enterprise IT and operation knowledge. However, in the face of issues such as giving full play to the expertise of technical personnel, promoting sustained profit growth, and carrying out business innovation, most IT leaders still lack confidence.

Due to their responsibilities, CIOs often need to accumulate a large amount of cross-professional experience and participate in the management and operation processes of each department in the enterprise. Although the business training over the years has accumulated rich enterprise IT and operation knowledge, in the face of issues such as giving full play to technical expertise, promoting sustained profit growth and carrying out business innovation, most IT leaders still lack confidence.

Halid kark, Vice President and Research Director of Forrester, expressed the above points in an interview. In his view, unlike most enterprise department managers, CIOs are familiar with the entire business process and management mechanism. However, despite the solid basic knowledge, CIOs are often only good at using this type of experience to guide it implementation to meet business policy needs. Kark adds that few CIOs can create opportunities to help enterprises drive business innovation.

The reason for this is that most CIOs are not aware of business growth and can become a goal within their jurisdiction. "CIOs regard themselves as pure technical managers who lack sufficient confidence and think they are difficult to be competent as the enterprise leader, kark explained to zdnet reporters at the CIO summit in the Asia Pacific region of Forrester in Singapore on Thursday.

Regardless of the starting point, this idea must be reversed, he stressed. Rather than serving as a non-bright business participant, CIOs should act as co-creators of Corporate Affairs-actively seek business solutions and focus on helping organizations continuously innovate. "When an enterprise is facing a critical juncture in its development strategy decision-making, CIOs must come up with their own opinions as leaders at the executive level," he pointed out.

In addition, they can no longer just be satisfied with empty talk about how businesses should work closely with it, and how technology should help operations. Keeping pace with the times in the ever-changing business field is a necessary prerequisite to ensure long-term vitality of enterprises. Kark, the technical director of the immersed research affairs for many years, said that companies have high hopes for CIOs in the business field, CIOs must also use technical weapons to help the owners restrain their competitors and win market share.

Today, it is imperative to change the role of a CIO. Everyone must switch from an orchestra without a team to a jazz musician who participates in the competition. The former focuses on precision and control, while the latter focuses on impromptu play, creative thinking, and team collaboration, kark tells us.

John brand, Vice President and Chief Analyst of Forrester's CIO group, agrees with the above view. He believes that as the traditional positioning of technology and business departments is broken by the pace and scale of development in the new era, CIOs must be ready to transform from behind-the-scenes transaction handlers to former commercial executors, the IT department also needs to make the same development expectations.

At this CIO summit, brand publicly pointed out that excellent and competent CIOs must have a variety of management capabilities across the business and technical fields. He also stressed that the existence of CIO positions should not only buffer the gap between business and technology, but also serve as a bond between communication.

 

Asian business leaders are more active in the face of risks

CIOs of Asian enterprises are more active and open-minded compared with their western counterparts. According to kark's observation, this healthy mentality comes from a lighter burden on traditional IT systems. Of course, this does not mean that Asian enterprises are more relaxed in implementing transformation and coping with changes. "Due to lack of experience, CIOs of Asian enterprises need to face greater business risks in the process of innovation," he said.

Sometimes, the development path of innovative projects lacks mature business cases or ready-made implementation plans, which makes it difficult for enterprises to accurately quantify their ROI (ROI ). For example, CIOs may propose a private cloud Deployment Solution to the decision-making layer. The entire project will cost $5 million, but the reason they can persuade everyone is simply "trust me ", kark reluctantly pointed out.

In this case, good performance records and personal reputation become crucial. It is difficult for CIOs to implement their ideas overnight through big moves and projects. On the contrary, they have to start with the existing business, establish a long-term development vision while improving the existing technical output, and gradually introduce innovative processes and services into daily business, he suggested.

He also added that the execution tasks that deserve priority include optimizing the existing IT infrastructure, improving technical operation efficiency, and achieving objective needs that business users can easily solve.

 

Original article: CIOs lack confidence to be biz leader