Menu
Who's In Charge?

Who's In Charge?

According to the State of the CIO survey, CIO’s are increasingly responsibile for business strategy and not just technology

It's an assertion that would win nods of agreement from many of Australia's CIOs. In organisations across the nation, CIOs are increasingly being expected to act as business strategists almost as much as technologists. According to CIO's State of the CIO survey, Australian CIOs are for now still appraised more for their project performance - including their ability to deliver on time and within budget - than their business leadership, a contrast to the situation in the US, where two-thirds of those surveyed were compensated or evaluated primarily for their leadership and for making their companies profitable. But Australian CIOs are catching up, with leadership and demonstrated value playing a growing role in the demands companies put on their CIOs across organisations of all sizes.

That's certainly the way it is at Blockbusters, where IT director Steven Ash says IT is playing an increasingly important role in the overall business strategy. Ash is expected to take an active leadership role in delivering and supporting the overall goals and objectives of the company and to offer up ideas and solutions to issues or improvements across every department. He did both when - hamstrung by a head office-imposed mandate to retain an ancient point of sale system for at least the next couple of years - he advocated putting ADSL lines into every store and putting a PC into each so-called "manager's pit" to allow development of an intranet.

"Once that was there, it opened up a myriad of new ideas," Ash says. "It actually improved all-over company communications 10-fold. It also allowed us to roll out applications that we would not otherwise have been able to do, like an online payroll kiosk for the staff where all the information that they otherwise would have had to phone here to get or find in paper form, we could post on the intranet."

Ash says he loves the fact that in the business he finds himself in, his title might be IT director but he is heavily involved in all facets of the business and gets to learn much beyond IT. His compensation, meanwhile, is heavily tied to his performance, and particularly to how well or badly he is able to further the overall goals of the business.

"We as directors - and there's seven of us in this business - as a group are evaluated on the overall performance of the business at the end of a budget year, and that's based on revenue and cost," Ash says. "Of course I can't really control the revenue side, so my area of concentration would be to control cost and to provide solutions that are cost effective for the business. So it's managing my own budget, plus assisting others in keeping their own costs down by providing IT solutions."

CIOs say increasingly, being a business leader means getting involved in supporting the aims and aspirations of other parts of the business.

At Victoria's Alfred Hospital acting director IT Mark Gravell has an internal SLA on provision of services to the business, but is also providing guidance on project management and project governance for the entire organisation. Gravell says a UK-developed project methodology introduced by the IT group, which enabled its PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) to be delivered on time and on budget, has had enterprise buy-in and has been seen as very useful. "I think our strategic planning exercise shows the management and governance [capability] we've well developed down here, and that will probably be extended for other departments to use as a model, both on project management and potentially our strategic planning exercise," Gravell says.

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

More about ACTCharles Sturt UniversityCharles Sturt UniversityHISHolden- General MotorsOnline LearningPLUSProvisionProvisionRACVWorkcover

Show Comments
[]