Stories by Kim S. Nash

No company sets out to create convoluted processes supported--sometimes thwarted--by layers of overly complicated technology. But too often, that's what we face.

Employees and consumers expect user interfaces to be so easy to use that they require no training. That isn't easy to do with corporate software, but CIOs expect vendors to help accomplish the goal.

Mobile and social media have changed how we do business, and your business processes need to catch up with the times. We talked to experts in the field to provide CIOs with where to start.

The co-author of a new book says younger professionals are gadget-savvy and global-minded, so they require a new leadership style

As one of three credit bureaus in the United States, Equifax keeps financial data on every adult in America, plus people in 16 other countries. But the company knows much more than just what goes into an old-fashioned credit score.

More than a year into its bring-your-own-device program, MasterCard Worldwide continuously assesses the security technology and policies that allow 30 percent of its employees worldwide to use their personal iPhones, iPads and Android devices at work.

You hear a lot about organizations that must make split-second decisions or risk losing to competitors. Split-seconds? That's usually an exaggeration, unless you're talking about Formula One racing.

Helen Cousins

The hierarchy inside a company reflects its values and priorities. It can be a sensitive topic for CIOs. Who your boss is -- CEO, CFO, COO, someone else -- can color the way other executives view you and your staff.

Five years from now, the CIO will be a better, faster, stronger version of today's top IT leader, practically running the company single-handedly. Or maybe other business executives will become more educated about IT and decide to hire cloud companies to do it all, leaving the poor CIO to wither, enforcing service-level agreements for a living. For almost as long as there have been CIOs, we've heard breathless speculation about whether the position will last, and if so, in what form.

Why don't CIOs turn in more insider criminals? No one suggests that CIOs routinely cover up corporate crime, but management pressures may inhibit CIOs from acting on their suspicions early in a fraud scheme.

She knew which database to query to download the information to her work laptop, and from there she emailed it to a personal account. Sometimes, she loaded a USB flash drive with material. Li, a Chinese national, then put the information up for sale through a pharmaceutical company that she partially owned, whose parent is based in China.

How does technology affect people's moral judgments?

Just as all politics is local, so are supply chains local. If one of your key manufacturers in Asia or a big IT service provider in South America goes down after a disaster, you might, too.

The customer is always right, but how would you know? Few CIOs truly understand what external customers want and why they act the way they do. Running IT can all too easily keep CIOs internally focused, making sure fellow employees have the technology they need to do their jobs. That's important work, but it's not strategic.