CIOs need to adopt a venture-capitalist approach to IT
if they are to remain relevant in the prevailing climate of
economic growth, according to Dave Aron, vice-president and
research director forGartner executive
programs.
This involves getting to know the growth plans of the business
intimately, determining how to use the resources within IT to
contribute directly to that growth, and then consulting with
business to shape the demands on IT to ensure delivery of growth
and not merely support.
"It is no longer enough to focus on good services and complying
with frameworks like
ITIL and
Cobit because these do not guarantee IT will contribute in any
way to business growth, which is the prevailing trend in the global
market," he said.
Delivering projects that enable business growth has been the top
priority of CIOs for the past three years, according to Gartner's
annual survey of leading IT professionals.
"Around 60% of CIOs expect their businesses to grow faster than
the global economy, which the IMF predicts will grow at around 5% a
year until 2012," said Aron.
Gartner said CIOs who are
succeeding in delivering direct business growth have typically
evolved from providing support and taking orders from business to
being more actively growth-oriented.
"Shaping demand is a key role for IT leadership. CIOs should
look at the budget, infrastructure, people and skills under their
control and find a way of using them to generate as much growth for
the business as possible," said Aron.
Gartner said the challenge for CIOs is to understand the growth
context for their particular business and then take action to
organise IT and IS resources to contribute to the most relevant
driver of growth.
"CIOs are generally weakest at engaging business executive peers
to understand what types of growth need to be catered for," said
Aron.
In a report entitled "The seven levers of growth" Gartner
identifies the most common drivers of growth and how CIOs can best
contribute to that growth once they have identified which one of
the seven is being pursued by their business.
For example, if a company has decided that improving operations
is the best lever of growth to pursue, the CIO should not only
focus on strengthening operational systems, but should take the
opportunity to contribute directly to growth by connecting with
customers.
"CIOs need to take ownership of some
customer relationships by working as account managers to learn
what delights customers and then finding a way for IT to meet those
needs," said Aron.
One CIO Gartner interviewed went a step further by asking
members of his IT department to work a week in retail outlets of a
food service on a regular basis and then contribute directly to
growth by coming up with ideas for improving operations informed by
their IS backgrounds.
Others examples of how CIOs can make a direct contribution to
top-line growth include adding information services to commodity
products as a market differentiator, using technology to fully
exploit modern communication channels, developing detailed process
templates to guide IT through mergers and acquisitions, educating
and empowering partners to ensure the business ecosystems keeps
pace with growth, and identifying ways of using IT to create new
markets where there is no competition.
Gartner's four recommended behaviours for CIOs to gear
up for growth:
• Clarify enterprise growth levers and where IS should
contribute.
• Build deep business knowledge and behavioural capabilities in
IS and contribute proactively to business project definition and
prioritisation.
• Go beyond conventional project management and participate in
good benefits realisation practices throughout the benefits life
cycle.
• Mentor the IS organisation to move from a mindset of "order
taker" to a mindset of IT venture capitalist to challenge the value
of IT investments.