W E A LT H W E AV E R S
COVE R S TO RY
EXPERT
SPEAK ERIC BRAUN
President and Managing Consultant, TeamShare Solutions
Manikkam V.S., Henkel: You want more business intelligence about how to run your operations better—the CIO is wellpositioned to provide that.
that they would manage IT. However, for strategic decision making, his opinion is always taken. “CIOs just need to instill confidence within the management. Once this is done, I believe that they are also given additional roles in the business,” says Gujral. Many in the industry believe that CIOs are better positioned to deliver improved processes and business results in their new roles, than they would have, had they held just technology positions. Just how successful a CIO can be to manage his role as the IT head (with attributes such as mentality, work style and thought process), influence the management's decision to place upon him additional responsibility, or handover new portfolio within his existing role. This is primarily because CIOs have a greater ability to influence their organisa-
tion’s direction—process, strategy and business models—when they have more of a role on the business side. Another reason to consolidate agencies or assign new roles is to save money by reducing the number of managers. A 2008 Gartner Executive Programmes survey of 1,500 CIOs, found that more than half of the CIOs held responsibilities outside traditional IT roles. Many more were given additional responsibilities in areas such as human resources—without officially adding these roles to the designations. “You want more business intelligence on how to run your operations better—the CIO is well-positioned to provide that,” says Manikkam V.S., Assistant General Manager (Materials), Henkel CAC Pvt. Ltd. Manikkam was told to manage the addi-
Ultimately, an organisation should have two functional roles—that of an internallyfocused CIO and that of an externally-focused CTO. Depending on the nature of the organisation, the two roles may be separate, or combined into a single person. The CTO role should align more with the client's perspective and look inward at the technology supporting the business, to see if it can be leveraged as value-added offerings to clients. Sometimes, it may make sense for these offerings to be given for free to the clients, which is certain to delight the client if the offering helps them improve productivity. An additional bonus is that the internal system or product will most definitely improve if it is transformed into a system or product for clients, because organisations always let bugs slide for internal systems. Even if there is no additional revenue involved, the organisation is certain to benefit from better internal productivity. Another bonus is that, the IT organisation is certain to achieve more innovation just by adding a level of disruption to the organisation. CTO FORUM thectoforum.com
07 JUNE 2010
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