Empowering The CIO

It is acknowledged that empowering the IT staff is essential for maximizing an organization's productivity, value, and growth. Real authority and responsibility is the prime catalyst for employee engagement and development. Initially, the IT sector was perceived as a cost cutting department. But gradually with the introduction of mobile applications and new age digital innovations, it has transformed more into a source of revenue generation for the organization. As such, budget allocation to IT departments has witnessed a massive paradigm shift over the last few years, reports CIO.

In this age of consumerization, BYOD and the cloud, IT departments are, in fact, vital to any business, able to create value and sort the wheat from the chaff as stakeholders eye new investments or money-saving ideas. As such, CEOs have become more benevolent in dispatching more funds than ever before to the IT department.

This has been clearly solidified from the survey conducted by MIS Quarterly where data compiled from more than 400 companies in the period between 1998 and 2003 established that investing in IT can result in increased profitability of an organization and astoundingly, in some cases, even more as compared to advertising. Although it does depend on the economics from company to company where some CEOs have been more successful in eking out profits in contrast to others.

The survey also found that board members are increasingly interested in diversifying their companies' offerings and lines of business. To that end, CIOs and other IT managers should take time now to analyze their strategies for absorbing technologies and systems gained through acquisitions.

What was intriguing was the fact that revenue raising projects were more efficacious in spawning profit when set against projects that focused more on cost cutting. Researchers of the survey stated that an increase of $1 per employee in IT spending was associated with an increase in sales of $12 per employee for growth-oriented projects.

Thus we see that in this day and age of disruptive technology, IT matters more than ever. IT is where the battle for the customer is won. It's a key weapon, a competitive advantage and nothing less than a necessity you can't afford to be without. CEOs should take a note of that!