'CIOs No Longer Have The Luxury To Focus On IT As 'Means To An End''

Doing business without IT is almost unimaginable in today’s globally distributed yet connected environment. IT has become an important part of the business in recent years. Biztech2.com spoke to Manish Bahl, Custom Research Manager, Springboard Research, to gather his views on the growing importance of IT in the Asian market and the changing role of the CIO, therefore.

What do you think is the primary reason that Asia in general, and India in particular, are emerging much quicker from the recession than their western counterparts?

Asia has fared better than the rest of the world and this can be seen through IT spending in the region, which has been fueled by continued growth in China, India and other regional markets. Springboard forecasted 2009 IT spending in India to grow 14 percent YoY and now that the year has ended, we feel that our prediction was quite accurate, with spending growing around 13 percent during the year. The changing attitude of Indian companies to view IT as an investment to be more competitive and to achieve operational excellence helped maintain the growth. Also, increased business and consumer use of the Internet and IT driving infrastructure requirements held promise in the Indian IT market. In addition, financial stability and government initiatives to spur economic growth coupled with initiatives in the rural sector continued to provide opportunities to vendors.

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The growth was also attributed to the increased competition in the country across almost all sectors, which encouraged IT user organisations to invest in technologies and solutions to remain competitive and to do business more efficiently. Interestingly, the decreased IT spending of major economies such as the US and Europe also prompted the attention of global and domestic IT vendors to develop solutions meeting the needs of Indian companies. Also, in spite of the deepened financial turmoil in the European and North American economies, the India banking sector showed strong resilience during the turbulent times and is one of the most promising sectors in the country.

‘IT abstraction forces CIOs to change or fall by the wayside’, says a recent Springboard Research article. In what way do you think CIOs need to change?

A common thread connecting many of the industry’s leading trends is abstraction, where business users and consumers are increasingly isolated from the underlying technology yet more connected than ever to the services and value that the technology offers. As an example, our SaaS research over the past several years has consistently found that line-of-business heads outside of the IT department represent a healthy proportion (over 33 percent) of SaaS buyers in Asia Pacific. In most cases, these customers bypass the CIO to implement SaaS solutions on their own to deliver business value.

We believe CIOs are increasingly being forced to focus directly on what really matters. In 2010, that means CIOs no longer have the luxury to focus on the ‘means to an end’, which is the very definition of IT. Instead, they must be focused on the end itself, which is delivering and/ or enabling business value. This shift in focus away from technology itself does not imply that CIOs will be any less powerful moving forward. However, we strongly believe that CIOs, who fail to embrace this overall evolution and apply it to their businesses and instead merely stay focused on the underlying technology, will greatly jeopardise their job prospects.

What do you think is the best way to commercialise social networking sites and make them accessible in India?

Commercialising social media can be done in a number of ways. Developing a process for users to follow to interact/ participate with/ in any forum/ groups could help provide a steady stream of revenues to social networking sites than just focusing on ad clicks to make money. I believe process monetisation is required on social networking sites and in order to do that, they need to have good content to attract users and make them willing to pay for participation in any group. Search for people through social networking site search engines can be monetised to develop a revenue model. Value-added services like ‘news and updates’ with crispy analysis (in a line or two) on a particular sector/ segment can yield potential revenue results for social networking sites.

I believe social networking sites, which can successfully demonstrate the ease-of-use of the site along with the depth of the content they provide, while also highlighting availability as a key benefit, will gain the lead in upcoming years. Sites like Twitter seem to be an effective way to distribute information. Thus, with a commercial version, it can provide a good distribution channel and corporates can actually pay to distribute content. Social networking sites can be used in many ways to help companies grow their business, especially in case of SMEs. For example, companies look to close deals online (like the way Infosys closed a deal on Twitter).

Most organisations, we believe lack the means to measure benefits in real terms, or might look at only short-term gains that could be difficult to quantify. On the other hand, social networking, wikis and blogs could play an important role in bringing about changes in organisational culture, making it more open and transparent, and making hierarchies irrelevant.