Surviving As A CIO

Bangalore: CIOs can’t allow themselves to be left high and dry succumbing under the bi-fold pressure of board level executives as well as their counterparts in parallel departments. In order to prevent such situations to arise, they have to resort to building partnerships both within and outside the organizational fence, reports Scott Lowe of TechRepublic.

CIOs reel under the daunting pressure after the advent of neoteric trends in technology, vis-à-vis Cloud, BYOD, Big Data, Virtualization and Social Networking to name a few. These technologies have been incorporated in the other departments apart from the IT sector. As such, the challenges and problems resulting from such technologies will only have to be dealt by none other than the CIOs.

This has become challenging for the CIOs as they not only have a limited workforce but also keep in mind the budgetary constraints that they are imposed with, not to mention to keep pace with the ever demanding consumers. This in turn spawns negative reputation that the CIOs have to live with.

As such, a formidable governance structure, with an efficient network system across the organization, where technology needs of various departments can be addressed, can allow the CIOs some amount of breathing space.

Also, having a project management office can come in handy for CIOs where concerned tasks could be assigned accordingly, adhering to respective projects which might help to reduce the ensuing chaos. Moreover, molding the data center staff into business analysts can be worth considering.

Last but not the least, building relationship across the organization- be it the CMO or CFO or the CEO himself- will enable a CIO to have an adequate understanding of the needs and requirements of the organizations. Doing so will also help in keeping over-the-top expectations in check from the same. Outsourcing services by building strategic partnerships with vendors will also be beneficial to a large extent.

Keeping in mind the above aspects will unleash a new zeal for CIOs to work with, yielding results as well ensuring the smooth functioning of the IT department.