LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE GAIN CEO MIND SHARE

CIOs seeking to get into the mind of the CEO must recognize that CEOs face enormous pressures stemming from greater globalization and hypercompetitive markets where performance (and market reaction) is measured in days, months, and quarters. CIOs can been seen as business enablers and partners by educating and demonstrating how technology can be deployed to exploit the Internet and a global economy. Running the IT organization as a business, adopting a value-add paradigm of delivering on promises (and expectations), and aligning business imperatives and technology investments through sound strategic planning will enable CIOs to lead the third industrial revolution and gain the mind share of the CEO and their business colleagues. (Al Passori)

OMB TO MONITOR FEDERAL OUTSOURCERS

By 2002, 70% of the Global 2000 will expand performance indicators beyond lagging financial measures to provide managers with more effective process visibility and control of critical success factors. By 2003/04, market leaders will link ITO performance measures to LOB impacts to better communicate IT contribution to business value. By 2005/06, companies will routinely manage measurement systems (e.g., early-warning systems, customer data warehouses, demand management systems, incentive program systems) that extend performance measurement from internal to external value chain modeling. (Donn DiNunno)

 BEWARE THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS

Savvy CIOs understand that, much like a Wall Street investor, the IT organization needs to develop a portfolio of IT assets (applications, systems, hardware, human capital, etc.) and manage them as enterprise investments. While CIOs have done a good job at capitalizing hardware and infrastructure assets - using 3-5 year amortization schedules and then disposing (or replacing) underperforming hardware assets - the same cannot be said for application software and other IT assets. CIOs should look at the IT portfolio asset management life cycle and, when considering returns (ROI/ROA/ROE), also calculate ongoing carrying charges (maintenance, fully loaded labor support, licensing costs) and dispose of or replace underperforming assets with a diminishing ROI value. (Al Passori)

 IT SURVIVOR CARE

In a substantially softened economy, US employers are trying to do more with smaller IT staffs. Global 2000 companies should not forget post-layoff survivors, because the workload burden will fall to these individuals. Employers requiring remaining IT employees to work longer hours (increasing a typical - for IT - 45-hour workweek to 60+ hours) must avoid pushing IT survivors out the door. Employers may believe they are cutting costs, when in fact they could be increasing staffing costs by as much as 50%+ due to lower employee morale, higher absenteeism, lessened productivity, and greater turnover. (Christine Woo)

MEASURING AND IMPROVING SPEED, AGILITY, AND IT VALUE