• Voice of Experience - real life examples of businesses that have outsourced
• Convergence Takes Hold - The global outlook for information, communication and technology markets.
• Programme Management Survey - organisations around the world are losing more than a quarter of their expected project benefits and 98% of organisations didn’t achieve targeted benefits all of the time.  So what are the golden rules of project management? 
• Sourcing in the Global Environment - A report into IT sourcing strategy, monitoring and measuring risks, value and the performance of sourcing.

One perception is that the boardroom has an obligation to share the role of IT leadership with the CIO - IT being too important to ‘abdicate’ to the IT department. So whether boardrooms like it or not they have to embrace IT. An alternative less hard-nosed perspective is that the need for the boardroom to engage in IT represents an opportunity for CIOs to enhance their value by providing the services of adviser, in order to make their senior executive colleagues more confident in respect of strategically important IT matters.

Clearly CIOs need to deliver real-value to gain trust, so a service level arrangement is important. However Peachey warns, “If the dialogue with your boardroom colleagues is constrained to the SLA metrics, then you are not fully engaged.”

He adds, “The acceleration of technology innovation makes it increasingly more difficult for senior executives to keep up. This is a great opportunity for CIOs to assist their colleagues in explaining what IT can and cant do.”

A further word of caution; for many business leaders IT is a foreign language, and like any foreign language, the user has to become familiar with the basics before more sophisticated dialogues can take place. CIOs will need to be skilled communicators to explain complex technology concepts in unthreatening business relevant terms. Providing an understanding of technology market trends and issues will help keep the ensuing conversations grounded in reality.

Presuming the IT department is aligned with the business, it is likely that in the course of its support to the business, it will develop wisdom in respect of the business processes. There is a real opportunity here for the CIO to be the boardroom’s process enhancement adviser. The benefits are obvious. Not least the large sums of money saved by no longer needing the services of green-horn management consultants, that charge a fortune to learn about your business before they even get around to process reengineering.

Boardrooms are at various stages of evolution in respect of ‘getting IT’. Today’s senior executives need to leverage IT for business success. The smart executives recognise that best value from IT is gained when the CIO is treated as an adviser rather than a service manager.

Ade McCormack
ade@auridian.com
www.auridian.com

Compliance has been haunting IT Directors since those idiots at Enron decided to go for broke. But hey here’s the thing. It has turned out to be very positive for companies and businesses everywhere, and although it has been a difficult road, IT Directors finally have the clout to put their companies’ technology in order.

However, having to comply with business regulations and laws is not a new phenomenon. Financial services organisations, as they are forever pointing out, have always been heavily regulated, and there are many other governance and financial accounting laws around the globe. But SOX is the one that caught people’s attention, possibly because it affects anyone doing business in the US, and because of the speed at which it was passed. There was little time to meet with the regulations, and IT Directors moaned about all the extra work it would take to be ready.

But the main reason SOX has been such a positive force for IT directors is because the final responsibility for complying falls with the Chairman, CEO and the rest of the Board. SOX has forced the senior management executives of all those companies to really focus on technology, whether or not their CIO has a seat on the main board, in a way that no amount of internal communications or hybrid management skills could do, because they are the ones who go to jail if the company does not comply with the law.

So first SOX gave heads of IT the clout (and budget) to audit their IT systems, infrastructures and processes, and then they have been able to use what they discovered to improve efficiency, security and to improve productivity. Companies now know precisely what systems, and business processes, they have in place, which ones work, and which need modification, and are using them effectively, often streamlining processes at the same time. There has not been time to argue about the relative merits of whether or not to implement, consolidate or modify something, or to delay it until the next budget round. It has had to done, and organisations are reaping the benefits.

Many large organisations have admitted that they have a far better understanding of their processes and systems because of regulatory compliance, with many including BT and Corus saying they have turned the requirements into positive strategic actions. The new regulations ask for a methodical and measured approach, and can offer a different approach to providing IT to the organisation.

Beleaguered IT departments have become the darlings of the company, as first they took on the task of managing corporate governance for the IT infrastructure, and then often became the in-house experts for other parts of the business struggling to get to grips with new regulations. SOX has asked organisations to provide a great deal of detail – one IT director said SOX is the sledgehammer to crack a nut approach – but then many IT directors, and their CEOs have been pretty impressed with the results.

For many companies regulatory compliance is now part of everything they do, and has allowed the IT director to understand exactly what resources and processes an organisation has, and to begin to increase efficiency and throughput as a result. It is too soon to tell whether SOX will achieve what it was designed for, but it is already offering organisations unexpected benefits, and is offering CIOs and IT Directors the opportunity to take their place in strategic planning, and to widen their experience and skills portfolios.

Business Intelligence is all about asking the right questions. The last few years have seen a massive effort by most organisations to try to organise their information through enterprise software, but unless they can drive the data they have collected to give them meaningful and useful reports it is pretty much wasted effort. Where customers are spending their money, and on what is useful information that can make the difference to the success and failure of a business.

Gartner’s annual CIO survey found that BI was the number one technology priority among heads of IT for 2006, and the analyst company has said that forward thinking organisations are looking to BI as a driver for business innovation and growth. CIOs plan to increase their BI budgets by 4.8 per cent this year.

Last year, expert BI vendors like Business Objects, Hyperion and Cognos all launched tools that make it possible to carry out quick reports on all business activities and transactions. But in spite of this, Gartner has warned that limited BI skills and competencies could hamper firms in effectively using the tools to distil the vast amounts of data they now own.

“BI is now part of an organisation's license to operate, as every enterprise needs to manage information," said Frank Buytendijk, research vice-president, Gartner, at the analyst’s annual BI Summit in London. "However, BI has not yet achieved the necessary level of strategic importance and is not included as an essential part of corporate planning activities. Moving forward, BI will become part of business innovation itself. Sharing information with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders increases loyalty and in many industries provides competitive differentiation. BI will become pervasive in operational and workplace applications as organisations seek to optimise their business.”

The recent trend has been for organisations to consolidate and standardise their applications and infrastructures, and this is a real advantage in effective BI. Retrieving data from 100s of different applications has been difficult and costly, but standardisation could ease this path. Obviously young organisations like the Internet players have a major advantage here. But the important action is to get the right skills in place, and then incorporate BI in strategic planning and business transformation.

“There are certainly no quick fixes where BI is concerned. There are multiple decisions and choices that need to be made on the road to making BI effective and pervasive in any organisation,” said Buytendijk. “These decisions cannot be made in isolation and must be considered within the wider context of the business. One of the key decisions is to move beyond a BI vision that focuses almost exclusively on information dissemination and start integrating BI into an organisation's strategic planning activities."

Gartner suggests that organisations:

- Develop user skills and a culture in the use and analysis of information to be an integral part of achieving business objectives
- Change the way BI is integrated into business processes
- Change the way the information architecture and application portfolio are implemented and managed

Some BI vendors have already responded to the potential skills shortage by getting together with training organisations and colleges to design BI specific courses. Cognos has said it may launch a training scheme designed to increase the number of skilled IT professionals able to understand the principals of building and managing a data warehouse. But really successful BI needs a two pronged approach. Firstly highly skilled IT professionals who really understand the mechanics of the technologies, and secondly highly skilled business professionals who know what questions to ask of their data.

Increasing demands from the business, changes to the way in which systems are developed, and the beginnings of a shortage of staff with the right skills all mean there has been no better time for an IT Director to demonstrate really good leadership.

Being able to inspire, empower and motivate staff – lead them, rather than drag them - is key in this new era of the IT organisation. IT has never been seen in the mainstream as a glamorous career option. Many people see their own organisation’s IT department as rather beleaguered and under pressure, with job roles and responsibilities expanding for little extra recognition. The problem is that no one should really notice IT unless there is a problem. Consequently many IT Directors are suddenly finding that recruiting, training and managing staff has become one of their most pressing concerns.

Being a good manager isn’t easy, or an excellent leader because it involves the vagaries of human nature. People may be the most valuable asset that a company has, but it is far easier to deal with a logic-based problem than to unravel a member of staff’s lack of motivation. Traditionally IT Directors have not been seen as possessing those so-called ‘soft’ skills needed to get the most out of their staff – especially when trying to communicate. If they had been, more would have gone on to CEO and Chairman roles in their organisations. But now is the time to change.

At a recent CIO roundtable the main topic of conversation was worries about staff and a potential skills shortage. One CIO from a leading logistics company said that people were the single most important issue he was dealing with, and that they would be on his agenda for the foreseeable future.

The changing nature of roles within the IT organisation and offshoring are both fuelling concerns about recruiting and managing staff. The argument goes that because much more coding and systems development work is taking place offshore, IT Directors are finding it increasingly difficult to find IT project managers with the right skills, because there is no obvious funnel through programming to find managers. This is why good leadership is important. If the next generation of IT managers is not coming up through the ranks of programmers, then they are going to have to come from a more general business background. That means that IT Directors need to make their departments attractive to all round business staff, rather than those just interested in computer science.

And because the scope of an IT jobs is also expanding, it needs to be managed very carefully, otherwise the expansion could seem an onerous burden rather than an opportunity for staff to develop their careers. Skills need to be broader, so it makes sense for more of them to come from a wider background. IT Directors must be able to attract these people into their organisation, and make sure that the department gets the recognition it deserves. Good leadership skills are a must.

Enterprise software is complicated, expensive stuff, with long lead times and it quite often needs the help of a partner or massive consultancy to get it right. For every pound spent on some licences, around five pounds will be spent on consultancy – this stuff is tricky.

But another business model has emerged that could help even the most hard-pressed and cash poor IT Director. ‘On demand’ or Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers software through a rental model, the theory being that customers only pay for the software they use to run their businesses, and for many it seems to be working.
Market research organisation IDC believes the acceptance of SaaS delivery models will continue to gather momentum. "2005 was a high-profile year for the software-on-demand delivery model, marked by increased software industry education, customer awareness, and focus on the positive customer experience," says Erin Traudt, research analyst for IDC's Software as a Service programme. "Worldwide revenue associated with on-demand software grew healthily, although adoption is still at a relatively early stage. IDC anticipates continued customer interest and demand as well as provider innovation as more customers request this type of software delivery."
Although SaaS has had predictable reactions from the established players like Oracle and SAP it is gaining ground amongst customers fed up with paying for software, which either they don’t use or that isn’t working. For IT Directors it is definitely worth taking a look.

At this year’s Wimbledon tennis championship IBM will provide the on-demand hosting for the tournament, as it has been doing for a number of years. In fact stuffy old Wimbledon was one of the early adopters of the on-demand delivery model, and was IBM’s first global reference site for on-demand, as it used the model for its web site as early as 1995, when it had around 200,000 hits during the fortnight. Last year it had four million.

Because it is still early days in the SaaS market there are still many arguments over long-term costs and security. But Salesforce.com, which has made a big impact on the market likens software to utilities. You wouldn’t build a power plant, so why build an IT department, when you can buy software like a utility.

Of course it is not as simple as that, but a mixture of hosted and owned software seems the likely future path for many organisations. The vendors are already positioning themselves. IBM recently announced that it would add to the numbers of on-demand applications available – currently it is most active in areas like CRM - and will be actively encouraging and helping its partners to provide SaaS offerings. For IT Directors under constant pressure to provide costs savings and improved efficiency, SaaS may be a great path to take.

The pace of technology change is so fast that sometimes it is hard to stand still and take stock of what is really happening. This is especially true in the communications worlds, where IP convergence is having a fundamental effect on the working practices of organisations all over the world. For IT Professionals it is a time to take stock, find out as much as possible about how these changes might affect them, and start to change some of their basic approaches to providing technology to their organisations.

The problem is that most IT and communications people don’t speak all those languages, according to Bartley, so they need to make sure they understand what is going on so that they can work effectively in a converged network environment.

Building Zones provides technology services that change the way people use buildings, it has been one of the pioneers in providing wireless access solutions, and operates the most active public wireless site in central London, the British Library, which has more than 3,000 visitors each day. The company also provides private wireless infrastructures for companies to allow visitors to their sites to get on line securely.

“Wi-Fi was a big change for everyone,” says Bartley. “And more and more wireless is now coming online, which is offering new ways of working, with major implications for how offices are designed and how space in them is allocated. It used to be that workers had their own spaces, but now spaces are more likely to be task related.”

For many companies security is the biggest worry in this arena. However, this is one area where IT professionals can really make a strategic difference if they understand how security on wireless systems works, Bartley believes. “Skilled IT professionals can give reassurance to organisations, because there is no good reason not to use wireless systems. They should skill up areas like rogue access, weak encryption, and un-trusted devices.”

IT has traditionally been concerned with mission critical applications for the business, and IT managers have often worked hard to keep anything else away from these systems. But IT Professionals now need to begin to really embrace innovation, especially in the networked convergence arena. For example, convergence devices are now being used in the basic building controls for organisations, and it all needs to work together. Last year Building Zones completed work on the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) new HQ in Wimbledon. The building uses extensive Wi-Fi technology, which allows for cordless telephony, wireless Internet access throughout the building, and giving visitors access through an online visitor portal with user names and passwords issued by the reception desk.

Many companies are now using primary transactional networks for their internal business systems, together with a secondary network for visitor access, new digital media, and mobile telephony. There is a good business case for the second network, and partioning of trusted and un-trusted networks, so that any un-trusted device is kept nowhere near the mission critical corporate servers.

Bartley believes that IT Professionals have to keep a careful eye on the innovations in the market, and become skilled in embracing these innovations. “IT Professionals have to be ready for wholesale convergence,” he says. “The technologies being developed and taken up, like WiMax and transitional wireless hotspots, are changing the landscape of the workplace, and habits of the workforce. IT Professionals have to understand the technologies, and then embrace the innovative working practices which they will lead to.”

The IT recruitment market is at its most buoyant since the dotcom boom, and in one recent survey the proportion of IT professionals looking to change jobs in the next six months was well over 50 per cent. Finding and keeping enough skilled IT staff over the next 12 months is going to get ugly.

One of the best ways to do this is not through pay rises, but through motivation and improving job satisfaction. In last year’s Harvey Nash CIO Salary Survey job satisfaction came out as one of the most important factors in changing roles, illustrating how important motivation is to keeping a happy productive workforce.

More recently Accenture carried out a survey that found job seekers don’t place as much value on fashionable job attributes like corporate citizenship and diversity, as they do on traditional benefits like good rewards and personal growth opportunities. In fact challenging and interesting work is the most important characteristic – selected by 60 per cent, with potential for recognition and reward for their accomplishments a close second with 58 per cent.

So if your team has returned from their summer break demotivated, and lacklustre you may need to take steps to increase their job satisfaction, before they begin to look for a different job. It may be enough to expand their roles and responsibilities, and to look for new ways of challenging them. After a couple of years of not having to try too hard to keep staff, getting the HR department involved with providing incentive programmes or bonus schemes may be an effective way of heading off any potential retention problems.

It may also be time to reappraise your own management techniques. Have a look at the way in which you are managing the team, and see what you can do to improve job satisfaction for your staff. It is clear from research that both CIOs and their staff are motivated by a challenge, so it makes sense to try to increase the challenges available for staff, and wherever necessary to expand roles. This doesn’t mean expanding the work they do, which will have the opposite effect, but adding to responsibility and interest in their work.

If that isn’t possible, it may be useful to consider team building and motivational sessions. Research into employee motivation carried out back in the 1930s, found that the very fact that you are paying more attention to your team could pay dividends in productivity and effectiveness. The research, which later became called the Hawthorne Effect, proved that employees are highly motivated by emotional factors, like getting attention, being included and in sharing responsibility as well as improved benefits and salaries. In the Hawthorne Effect experiment, even those workers in the control group who weren’t actively involved in the research improved their productivity and felt more motivated, just because they felt that someone was taking an interest.

IT Directors are constantly being told that communication is a key skill. But they need to make sure they are communicating with their team to motivate them, as well as the management board, and their users, if they are to avoid having to spend valuable time trying to replace good staff who feel undervalued and de-motivated.

Location: Hotel Du Vin, Church Street, Birmingham, B3 2NR
Directions: Leave the M6 @ Junction 6 and follow the A38(M) to Birmingham City Centre. This takes you on an elevated section of the road straight into the centre of Birmingham. Proceed over the flyover, keeping in the left lane. Take the exit at St Chad’s Circus signposted ’Jewellery Quarter’ immediately at the end of the flyover. Do not go through the underpass. Follow the road to the traffic lights on the roundabout. Take the second exit under railway bridge - Great Charles Street. Then first left - Livery Street. Take third turning on the right - Barwick Street and follow to the junction of Church Street. Turn right and Hotel du Vin is immediately on your right.

RSVP: Miriam Piddington miriam.piddington@harveynash.com Tel: +44 (0) 121 717 1921

Location: Malmaison Hotel, 1 Swinegate, Leeds, LS1 4AG
Directions: A city centre location, a short walk from the traditional business district, in the middle of the newest commercial area, 2 mins from the train station with retail heaven close by. Discounts for parking are available in the nearest multistorey car park.

RSVP: Denise Marsden denise.marsden@harveynash.com Tel: +44 (0) 113 202 8907

Harvey Nash has run this survey for the last eight years and it has grown in stature each year to become a definitive study of emerging trends for the CIO community.

Why Attend?

This complimentary seminar is a must attend event for IT Executives, CIO’s and Board Level Directors with involvement in the IT Function, who want to find out more about the changing role of the CIO.

Delegates will be given the opportunity to meet the other key IT decision makers and will share ideas on the issues that matter most to the IT community.