bRInG bACK tHe GRoWtH BY KANIKA GOSWAMI
Will the coming upswing give CIOs and innovative IT a chance to play a more significant role than they ever have?
P HoTo BY SRIVATSA SHAN DIlYA
Kumar Parakala
KPMG's Exec Dir., Head IT Advisory,Global Head-Sourcing, says CIOs agenda for 2010 is to launch organizations on a growth path. Vol/5 | ISSUE/02
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Kumar Parakala: I agree that IT innovation will be critical in helping business organizations recover faster from the global financial crisis. It is extremely important for an organization to continue to innovate to remain in business — runs the risk of commoditization. IT has always been an enabler for business transformation and also plays a very important role in various organizations within the enterprise to improve operational efficiencies. On both those fronts, innovation is absolutely critical. And the CIO, as the leader of the IT organization, definitely has a significant role to play in helping organizations recover faster from the impact of the global financial crisis — as well as coming up with innovative solutions that will drive the recovery and the business strategy of a company. This includes looking at innovative service delivery opportunities using IT. The CIO needs to be become chief innovation officer using IT.
Are a CIO’s cost-cutting days done? The Indian economy is very buoyant, and in the last few months we have seen a number of positive signs of recovery. Vendors that we’ve been interacting with tell us that there’s a lot of optimism in the market. They believe that organizations are now in a recovery and growth mode, which means more money will be spent to support a growth agenda, which is good for vendors. As far as cost cutting is concerned, there are now healthy indications of growth over the next two years, and I don’t think CIOs should look at significant costcutting. Value creation is more important than costcutting to support the growth agenda of companies and that should be a CIO’s focus. ReAL CIo WoRLd | D e c e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 9
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12/12/2009 9:04:30 PM