Why Brand Management Is A Key Aspect Of Being A CIO

The CIO is a very complex persona. On one hand he reports to the CEO, on the other he facilitates the CXO’s targets and establishes himself as a true business leader and technology value creator. At the same time, CIOs cannot afford to stagnate. As the technology they deal with is ever-changing, CIOs must regularly upgrade and increase their understanding of today’s trending technologies like social media, cloud computing, Big Data – this is a perennial process. It should be the goal of every CIO to establish oneself as a visible, competent and influential professional, irrespective of the size of enterprise.

The CIO As A PR Manager

The CIO’s role is the one point in the organisation where ‘business’ and ‘technology’ blend. As a CIO, this means you have great reach into the business, but without the support of your fellow CXOs. It would seem that life here will be difficult. Surprisingly, getting the support from C-level peers is rather easy and involves a change in mindset on the CIO’s part.

Most business people understand ‘value’ not as a working tech product/service, but as bottom-line value in the business. So it is imperative that the CIO runs a “profit centre” and not a “cost centre”, and must be able to convey this information using terms easily understood by seasoned business executives.

When a new CIO joins an enterprise, he often does not have the full trust of all the CXOs. It makes sense then to work to gain the trust of these CXOs since you’ll be working with them on a day-to-day basis as you build a future for the enterprise. I’ve often found people are more receptive when they understand that your focus is to help them work better, and thus help the organisation perform better and yes, this must be said in words as you discuss your plans with each of those CXOs.

There are specific functions that each CXO is tasked with and the power the CIO holds is the ability to bring technology benefits to all of those functions. It’s important to identify which business head cares about what, and thus the CIO can approach them with a solution to their problem. This helps build tremendous political power in the organisation, as the CIO is then applying strategy to the company as a whole and not just his own targets. For example, the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) wants to hear about technology solutions for advertising, marketing and other ways to increase market share. The CFO (Chief Finance Officer) wants to hear about technology saving money or bringing in improvements that will result in lower expense. The COO (Chief Operations Officer) is focused on improving operational processes to a point such that less people need advanced training or maybe you can even reduce the number of people hired using the magic wand of technology. The point is everyone understands how powerful technology is, and all you need to do is show how it will benefit them directly.

Getting The CFO And Other CXOs On Your Side And Making IT A Business Venture

To be honest, the CFO is always on your side, as a CIO you need to show your skills in bringing in value for the team. A CFO understands capability in terms of Internal Rate of Return (IRR) and if you can show greater return for whatever project you’re planning (i.e. investment) you’re likely to get the CFO’s soft spot. The CFO is the second most powerful CXO after the CEO – and if you convince the CFO of the value of your project you have won several victories right there. For example, you want a new CRM in place. How do you justify it?

To the CFO – The new CRM will reduce turnaround time, allow faster lead entry and produce results quicker. For the investment of Rs. 200,000 we expect to see a time saving of roughly 3 man hours per day – which evaluates to 3 x 50 man hours for a 50 person company, and in rupees terms becomes Rs. 1500 per day if you pay just Rs. 10 per hour for each data entry operator. Your annual saving for a one-time Rs. 200K investment is thus Rs. 390,000 (saving Rs. 1500 per day, over a span of 260 working days). Naturally we can capitalise on this time instead of saving it, thus our IRR would be closer to Rs. 500,000 on a Rs. 200,000 investment.

To the CMO – Ad campaigns can be integrated into the CRM, which then allows us to track details about where our customers came from; we can target those areas more and get higher quality leads – which will help us improve our market share.

To the COO – Operations speed will improve to the point we can save 3 man hours a day, thus we can either trim the team size or increase the volume of data processing at any given time.

If The CIO Moves Into Business, Who Takes On Technology?

As one grows through the role it can be difficult to stay focused on core technology unless your company sells products/services that are technology based. What we did is, got in a CTO/IT Head who is able to regulate basic day-to-day tactical moves to ensure current tech is up and running, and you maintain a strategic vision of the future. Never try to split focus on these two totally disparate segments of your department. Doing so can result in poor value addition to the company as a whole and you will be unable to fulfill your promises made to the other CXOs as mentioned above.

Keeping in line with what we discussed about the CTO factor above, having vendors sourcing part or most of your complex services (especially cloud based services) makes sense for two reasons. One, the CIO does not need to worry about the nitty-gritty of setting up and maintaining these services, plus you save on CTO + hardcore technology team costs. At the same time, you get packaged products with a guaranteed SLA (if you don’t have one, do get a Service Level Agreement in line with ITIL concepts) which ensures you can offer an uptime guarantee to your customers as well.

It is important to remember that a CIO may not always have a CIO title - they may be project managers in some firms, product managers in others, CTOs, or sometimes even the CEO may encompass the role of the CIO. But every company needs a functioning CIO and if an enterprise does not have a CIO function… well, they’re in for a tough time.