- Chief Information Officer
- Butler University
Gartner CIO Priorities Series
The series will provide analyst overviews of the issues that are top-of-mind for every CIO in 2012 and beyond. We'll cover these issues in depth at this year's event.
CIO Priority: Operational Efficiency
Barbara Gomolski, Managing Vice President, Gartner Research
Inefficiency is expensive. It's time for IT to build intelligence into every business process.
As businesses embark on a quest for growth — coupled with yet another round of flat IT budgets — operational efficiency has taken on new urgency. Now more than ever, IT is being called on to accelerate processes, reduce manual tasks and streamline decision making — all in an effort to do more with less.
While new delivery models, such as cloud, can have a powerful and immediate impact on operational efficiency, very few organizations are building out systems to support operational efficiencies "from scratch." Therefore, most CIOs must employ a strategy of incremental change: (1) Create shared services that eliminate costly duplication, (2) adopt "lean" principles that cut out waste, and (3) encourage a shift in the organizational culture that supports creative problem solving and new thinking.. For many organizations, the shift will be sequential: Achieving IT efficiency first, then tackling business efficiency. Leading the way to new levels of operational efficiency is a key focus area of this year's Gartner CIO Leadership Forum.
Key opportunities and challenges include:
- Employing meaningful industry benchmarks, and identifying key areas for improvement in your own environment
- Leveraging alternative delivery models, such as cloud, to save both time and money
- Optimizing legacy systems incrementally to create shared services and applications
- Applying lean concepts to IT
- Creating an enterprise culture that supports operational efficiency
CIO Priority: Strategic Leadership
Leigh McMullen, Director, Gartner Research and Co–Conference Chair
Breaking Organizational Inertia: Pushing Leadership Competencies Throughout the Enterprise
As demand for performance and capability grows, IT must transform itself from a back–office provider of commoditized services to be more engaged and impactful to the market metrics of the business. In order to excel at that mission, CIOs need to deploy leadership competencies throughout the organization, fostering consultative and collaborative skill sets that have been under–emphasized in the past. The best IT engagement is multi–lateral; success depends on every touch point firing on all cylinders—and everyone who touches the line of business executing against a shared vision. Monolithic, top–down control is a thing of the past; a real leader knows that a team is much stronger than any individual, and that together, they have greater power and capability than they might imagine.
Making a leadership strategy come alive within your organization—and demonstrating why it is to every member of the organization who contributes to its success—is just one of many issues we’ll explore at this year’s Forum.
Key opportunities and challenges include:
- Overcoming push-back and organizational inertia, and instilling a sense of accountability up and down the enterprise
- Envisioning how the second wave of digitization will manifest itself based on unique enterprise circumstances, needs and emerging market opportunities
- Repositioning IT as a vital front-office contributor that will significantly impact market metrics and deliver value to its constituents
- Establishing yourself as a proactive business leader with a seat at the table, accountable for revenue growth and business value
CIO Priority: Customer Experience
Mark P. McDonald, Group Vice President, Gartner Executive Programs and Conference Chair
The Customer Experience is the New Focal Point for Growing Revenue and Cutting Costs
What does leadership mean for today's CIO? According to the Gartner 2012 CIO Agenda Survey, delivering a superior experience to your customers is at the top of the list. To grow revenue and cut costs, start with the customer. With the customer experience as a focal point, organizations no longer have to choose between reducing costs and growing revenue. Instead, leaders see a streamlined customer experience as a pivotal opportunity for technology to amplify their ability to attract and keep customers — all while eliminating costly duplications that detract from the customer experience.
Combining the two is a strategic win for you and your organization, and just one of many issues surrounding the customer experience that we’ll cover in depth at this year’s Forum.
Key opportunities and challenges include:
- Using technology to create a simple, powerful and satisfying customer experience
- Combining revenue growth and cost-cutting in a single strategy
- Reducing internal clutter that detracts from quality of customer interaction
