More about what a CIO should present to the board

This comment appeared in response to a previous posting. It seemed to be worth additional discussion. – Bob

In my experience it is important to determine if board considers IT as strategic resource or a cost center.

If this is determined the emphasis of the presentation would have to change. The cost center thinking is served well if the presentation concentrates on how IT is will reduce the cost.

This requires that the IT infrastructure is thought as a production unit that could be outsourced. At this time CIO plays the role of evangelist who ensures that the Information Availability requirements of the business are met while the head count that manages the IT Architecture, Business Processes, Vendors and their service levels and technology leadership is retained and honed in the IT department and rest is outsourced as much as possible.

The board that thinks IT is strategic would want to know by what initiatives IT would help them improve their revenue. Supply chain management, business intelligence availability, business process optimization and improvement by deploying new technologies and many other such initiatives could be presented in a concise but effective manner.

The jury is still out to decide if IT is strategic or not.

Alok Khare

Dear Alok …

First, thanks for posting this. Comments such as yours provide more value to readers than my original entries, I think.

You make two key points here. The first is that the content of a CIO’s presentation to the board should depend on the board’s perspective of IT. Absolutely, which was one reason I recommended sitting down with the CEO to find out what each board member cares about. Remember – there’s no reason to think the board is unanimous in its thinking on this subject.

I’d also say this: Just because many of a boards’ members think of IT as nothing but cost doesn’t mean the CIO has to accept this as a given. Certainly, the CIO should begin by acknowledging this as a common perception among business executives. From there, he or she can point out that:

* The IT budget includes both discretionary and non-discretionary expenses.

* The former constitute investments in the company’s future.

* One of IT’s core strategies is to find ways to reduce non-discretionary spending (which includes IT operations and application maintenance) without creating risk, to make more available for discretionary investments.

Which gets to your second point – really more of a question – which is whether IT is strategic or not. The answer to that is this isn’t something built into the nature of things. It’s up to the CIO to make it strategic. It’s one of the fundamental responsibilities of the job.

– Bob