CIO’s Face New Challenges as Technology Advances

We came across a recent Deloitte article titled “The Duel Roles of the CIO in the Digital Age” that we found to be extremely insightful. The piece gave a wide-ranging view of the technical challenges facing IT organizations and, specifically, their Chief Information Officer (CIO) in this ever advancing technical age. As the article points out, “today’s IT organization is increasingly focused on revenue growth, customer experience, and data-based insight” as opposed to its focus of yesteryear, which was generally limited to building and operating IT infrastructure and automating business processes.

The article probed how CIO’s at companies that have adopted cloud computing face new challenges and have to answer new questions, such as which systems should be based in the cloud and which should be operated on premises. This is an especially important question for CIO’s to answer when it comes to legacy applications and infrastructure, as those will still be prevalent for years to come.

Despite having its share of detractors, the cloud services market is expanding almost five times faster than traditional IT spending, according to a Gartner analysts’ report, and it represents a growing area that must be addressed as part of broader organizational and IT strategy.

The four key areas surrounding cloud technology that require strategic direction include:

• Determining which applications/resources to move to the cloud and how to judge and manage a cloud vendor’s performance
• Balancing cost in hybrid environments which utilize on-premise and cloud applications
• Understanding the data security, contingency, and disaster response plans for the new environment

Here at DataServ, we have a fair amount of experience working with companies that have successfully utilized our Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions to increase business performance. These businesses, in general, have exhibited the following characteristics:

• They deploy our SaaS solutions for supporting business functions (such as accounts payable automation or accounts receivable automation), while focusing internal resources on mission-critical opportunities.
• They keep data integration among systems simple.
• They work with us, their SaaS provider, to clearly define a scope of work, measurable project goals, meaningful metrics, service level agreements, and regularly scheduled “client success” reviews to ensure they are achieving the business results they desire, both at the start of and throughout their relationship with us.

Remember, purchase to pay or quote to cash automation can provide both cost savings and the ability for your existing IT staff to handle more mission critical activities that are central to your organization’s success.

If you have further questions, please contact us at info@DataServ.com.