CIOs working in the banking and financial services arena
are continually dancing to a familiar tune: the relentless pursuit
of efficiency as a key driver of sustainable business growth.
That's a very simple thing to say - but damned difficult to pull
off, writesNeil
Pullen.
Being a CIO is like being a McLaren Formula One engineer,
competing against not just the Ferrari team, but several other
high-octane competitors. Likewise, whether you are in retail and
investment banking or insurance, all the teams are as cut-throat as
each other. To win, you have to be able to drive innovation:
initiate it, manage it and pilot it within the business to gain a
competitive edge. You have to provide systems that go "faster,
faster, faster" yet "cheaper, cheaper, cheaper", and get your
business first out of the pits and into the lead.
This means the CIO must take a leadership role to help the
overall organisation develop and maintain a vibrant but balanced
and structured approach to investments in innovation. The CIO will
always be challenged by his business partners to continuously
drive IT costs down and this is a pressure that will never go
away - nor should it.
Equally important is that the CIO constantly engages the
business line executives to make sure there is a common
understanding of the value that IT is creating for their business
and a shared vision of how to enhance and increase that value going
forward. Without this shared vision between the CIO and the
business execs, the organisation is in danger of making some
regrettable decisions on the cost-cutting-versus-investment agenda
in IT.
Consider this: although a CIO could once have claimed to be the
fount of all wisdom on technology within an organisation, that is
no longer the case. Today, senior executives outside IT understand
the criticality of technology to both their respective functions
and the organisation as a whole. The CIO is no longer the single
knowledge point or technology decision-maker.
The role of the modern-day CIO is to provide renewal and
transformation leadership be a facilitator in the top team shape,
design and mould the future model and deliver on agreed execution
plans.
That means taking a leaf out of a top civil servant's book,
being consistently out "on the road" throughout the organisation,
probing, finding out potential departmental glitches before they
become bigger, high-profile problems. It means having a deep
knowledge of all facets of the business, understanding the way its
banking, insurance and other financial services products work, how
the business can be better enabled by taking advantage of
technology and business-led innovation, and seeing what might be
coming down the track.
Ultimately,
the CIO should have the same critical view across the
organisation as the CEO, because the CIO is in a unique position
within the CEO's team.
He or she is informed, business-focused, primed with practical
solutions, and able to be a key influencer in the business's best
interests, the architect and custodian of the strategic technology
vision that underpins the organisation's plans, creating
competitor-beating qualities for the business.
Neil Pullen is managing director of bespoke
CIO financial services search firmFreestone
.</>