Is your IT service delivering what the business needs?

A CIO Magazine article "What it takes to succeedNow as a CIO" described the difference between results described by the CIO (Chief Information Officer) and the CEO of organizations. Much of this relates to the definition of expectations. Many CIOs are still buried in managing Information Technology and still not focused enough on business outcomes.

Some statistics in this study:

• 70% of 506 CIOs rated IT as "considered an integral business partner by the rest of the company", while 46% of the business respondents rated IT as fair or poor.
• When asked about the impact of IT, "only 15 percent of you chose managing customer relationships and 11 percent said acquiring and retaining customers", yet these were critical to the business.

The real story is in this quote "There's an outcome that we need. How do we get it? Not, 'We need a new system. Please put it in." If your business discussion is not being held this way, then your business will lose. Whether you have a CIO or an IT Manager, or no IT department at all, this is the type of discussion that needs to take place.

You can see the full article here.