Bob Evans, VP of InformationWeek Global CIO Unit wrote this week on the focus areas for CIOs in 2010. When I read the article I started to think about where MPS fit in allowing CIOs to accomplish their goals this calendar year, and how to approach those regarding MPS.
Top 10 CIO Issues for 2010 per Bob Evans, VP of InformationWeek Global CIO Unit
1. The cloud imperative – Cloud computing takes the top spot because this allows for CIOs to really attack #2. Despite all the questions and concerns, it offers CIOs huge potential for flipping the 80/20 ratio and exploiting #3 (driving revenue growth).
2. The 80/20 spending trap – If the majority of your IT dollars are spent keeping the lights on, then how will IT organizations fund transformative and customer-centric projects?
3. CIO-led revenue growth and customer engagement – If you don’t become part of the company’s revenue engine, and you choose to keep yourself isolated from customers, how can you expect to be taken seriously in today’s economy?
4. Mastering end-to-end business processes – CIO has the chance to analyze and understand all business processes end-to-end. It’s a remarkable opportunity. Where is the waste? Where is the latency? How is the revenue mix changing? Where is the new-product opportunity?
5. Business Intelligence and Predictive Analytics – You’ve got plenty of data, but how much insightful information? Are you able to see over the horizon? CIOs that seize the initiative will have a huge advantage.
6. External information vs. internal information – What is going on outside your four walls is more important than what’s going on inside. What are customers saying about you? Do you talk back? Do you listen?
7. CIO priorities, CIO compensation, CIO evaluation – Does comp reflect growth and customers and market –centric innovation? Is performance measured by plumbing-style metrics or by business-value breakthroughs?
8. Vendor consolidation, with radical exceptions – For the past couple of years CIO’s have reduced the vendor list – but have you also cut access to innovative ideas? Have you connected with unconventional vendors whose solutions might help spark a breakthrough?
9. The mobile enterprise – If a team of peers, customers, and competitors were to do a day-long review of your company’s mobile capabilities, would you be eager to share the results with boss?
10. The transformation quotient – When the economy turns, CIOs need to be out in front with new ideas and leadership on how their companies can aggressively tap into the new opportunities that await while shedding old restrictions about what a CIO’s responsibilities area and what they are not.
This paints a pretty complete view of what is important in IT organizations today. Obviously MPS doesn’t address all 10 and that is ok. Number 1 is out obviously, unless you are already an expert in Cloud Computing with applications like Software as a Service (SaaS), Utility Computing, Web Services, Platform as a Service (PaaS), etc. in your portfolio of professional services. Also out are numbers 3, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10. What, did you think MPS was going to eradicate every IT woe in the world?
How does MPS address numbers 2, 4 and 8 respectively?
Number 2 - CEOs are increasingly focused on IT strategies that aggressively shift budget dollars from an internal focus to external.
MPS accomplish this by allowing IT to reallocate their resources to more strategic external focused projects by shedding the managing of the fleet of printers. This also allows them to outsource a nuisance area because printers are not strategic in the IT world and they don’t like dealing with them. Typically they have no imaging or output fleet strategy because equipment, supplies and maintenance are reactive. I hear the objection coming…”What happens when the IT person I am working with wants to “protect” the employee that is doing four to 10 hours a week on printer repair?” A) You are at the wrong level. B) IT organizations of today/tomorrow will be tasked with generating revenue (see #3 above) and if they don’t understand this today they will soon enough. Maybe you are the resource to help them realize this.
Number 4 – Mastering end-to-end business process as it relates to an imaging fleet is difficult when investment in supporting the fleet is so fragmented over multiple internal budgets.
The assessment process in MPS allows for you to identify and quantify all of the cost related to managing and maintaining the fleet. The assessment will also find waste as it relates to how the fleet is utilized. You also identify waste in manpower, capital expenditures on hardware and costs related to maintaining and supplying the infrastructure. After completing the detailed assessment you will work with them, in the strategy session, on a plan to capitalize on this opportunity and manage what they have today. Over time they can reduce the investment with proper device selection and management.
Number 8 – Vendor consolidations… this is always a tricky obstacle.
In complex organizations where decision making is made up of multiple players you have to recognize that there are existing relationships with many of these vendors that you are suddenly trying to unseat. These vendors are engaged with numerous employees and functional areas, and possibly each of them has worked with their primary contacts in areas such as purchasing, facilities, IT, finance, etc. for years. I know MPS and the reduction of multiple invoices is a good talk track but what about the discussion on overlap in responsibility or the discussion on current procurement methods or the time each vendor wants with their primary contact and their getting involved with other functional areas. Each of these relationships takes time to maintain and that pulls resources from what they need to do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.
The bottom line – MPS is not going to cure every IT organizations challenges but if you have the right discussion points prepared for IT’s focus areas you will have a higher probability of building a business case for moving forward.
