How do you demonstrate IT's strategic value? What metrics, outcomes, or reporting mechanisms have proven most effective for showing that IT is a driver of competitive advantage and growth?

I echo much of what Colleen shared. There is a significant operational component, but we also focus on how we engage stakeholders and increase the value of technology. One concept I use is the “say-do ratio”—measuring what we say we will do against what we actually deliver. We track KPIs such as programs delivered on time, on budget, within scope, and at the expected quality. We also use SLAs and have established a model called Functional COE (Center of Excellence) with single points of contact, or SPOCs, for each area—supply chain, engineering, digital finance, HR, legal, and so on. These SPOCs educate stakeholders on the KPIs and contributions IT is making to support our business, such as improving first-time manufacturing quality or reducing quality issues. We use these metrics and say-do ratios to demonstrate IT’s value and keep stakeholders informed.

This is a double-edged sword for me because I have two roles: internal IT functional management and leading our digital services strategy, including product security. Each area requires a different approach to demonstrating value. For internal IT, we rely on traditional metrics, but prioritization can be challenging. For example, some issues may be urgent for a particular stakeholder but have less impact on the overall business compared to other priorities that have significant, measurable returns, sometimes in the seven- or eight-figure range. It’s important to maintain focus on initiatives that drive real business value and meet commitments to shareholders or regulators.

On the digital services and security side, it is more complex. We strive to demonstrate that our investments, such as achieving SOC 2 compliance, enable us to sell products into new markets or customer classes. While the product itself is critical, our work often opens doors that would otherwise remain closed. We try to quantify the return on these projects, whether in direct revenue or intangible benefits, and communicate this value to the business as regularly as possible.

In terms of demonstrating strategic value, we own, operate, and build several proprietary platforms to service our clients. The metrics we focus on include performance, stability, and availability of these applications, as well as timely data loading. From an internal perspective, we measure stakeholder satisfaction through metrics such as help desk response and customer satisfaction scores. However, I also believe there is a non-metric component that is equally important: regularly meeting with stakeholders across the enterprise to check in and ask questions like, “If you had a magic wand and could change one thing related to technology, what would it be?” This often uncovers valuable insights that might not emerge through standard reporting.

I am in a unique position, as I have CIO responsibilities even though we do not have a formal CIO role. In addition to these responsibilities, I also drive our strategy and operations to help scale the company. Our approach centers around what we call mission critical goals, objectives set at the highest level by the C-suite. Each of these goals is tied to specific metrics and KPIs, and every function, whether IT, finance, or sales, has critical metrics aligned to these company-wide objectives. This ensures that we are all working toward the same organizational goals. Rather than focusing solely on traditional IT efficiency metrics, we prioritize alignment with our business’s most important outcomes.