Posts filed under 'Economy'
CIOs Don’t Need Two Heads to Wear Two Hats
The holy grail of post-recession business will be profitable growth. The very idea of profitable growth is full of contradiction, as growth generally requires investment. With revenues unlikely to outpace that investment in what economists are predicting will be an anemic, drawn-out recovery, companies that have already been doing a lot of cost cutting will have to become even more efficient. This will put unusual pressure on executives to place the right bets when it comes to investments (based on strong customer insight and market knowledge). And it will require excellent management abilities and flexible, responsive, lower-cost IT.
The following presentation focuses on what the mandate for profitable growth will mean for CIOs and their organizations in 2010. I believe IT will have to become more operationally efficient AND deliver agility and innovation, that CIOs will have the great opportunity to delivery operational excellence and all kinds of tech-driven innovation as well.
Some people believe these two areas of focus are conflicting – that a leader (for example, a CIO) or an organization (for example, IT) can be good at one or the other but not both at the same time. They argue that when it comes to tech-enabled innovation, CIOs should offer advice but leave the heavy lifting to product designers and marketers. I disagree. What do you think?
Since the slides themselves are mostly just images, I suggest you view it on my Slideshare page, where you will also be able to view the speaker notes that make up the meat of the talk.
4 comments October 5, 2009
How IT Can Help Cash-Strapped Government Agencies Better Serve the Public for Less
Government agencies are in fiscal trauma right now. Billions of dollars over budget, many states are taking drastic measures to cut costs. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra and CTO Aneesh Chopra are aggressively pursuing software as a service and cloud computing as one way to cut costs, and the state of Utah is planning a private cloud to serve local agencies.
Governments are also building next-generation web sites to deliver a variety of services online. According to Government Technology, Utah.gov provides more than 860 online state government services. New features on its wonderfully designed website include location awareness, a new multimedia portal, Web 2.0 services, a data portal, forms search capabilities, and mobile applications.
The following presentation, which I gave at the annual conference of the South Carolina IT Directors’ Association last week, evaluates the current challenges of government agencies to provide services in a new way while continuing to cut costs. IT can definitely help.
To view this presentation with the speaker’s notes, go to my page on Slideshare.
Add comment September 24, 2009
A Brief and Colorful History of Technology in Business
I was asked to give a couple of talks this spring giving my perspective on the current state of technology in business. I always think the present is better understood by looking at the past, so I put together a presentation looking at a) how things have developed over the past 20 or so years (not coincidentally, the span of time I was involved with CIO Magazine), and b) the challenges and opportunities I see businesses in general and CIOs in particular facing during this tumultuous time. I’ve posted a version of this talk on Slideshare, complete with an audio narration. Please check it out and let me know if your view lines up with mine or how you see things differently.
Here’s the presentation (or you can view it from the Slideshare site):
And here’s a link to the clip I reference at the beginning, of the comedian Louis CK on the Conan O’Brien show. The relevant segment is about 1/3 of the way in and it’s about a minute long, where he talks about cell phones and internet service on planes. This bit really defines the problem technologists face in making end users and business partners happy. The whole thing highlights an even more fundamental problem we all face in seeking happiness through external means. Very Zen….
Add comment April 16, 2009
The Risks of Being Risk Averse
The paradox of tough times is they usually call for dramatic measures, yet it’s human nature to keep a low profile and avoid risk, both corporate and personal. This is the dilemma facing CIOs today.
As I wrote in a column a few months ago, incrementalism won’t cut it for many businesses in this economy. But according to Paul Gaffney, former CIO and head of supply chain at Staples and current COO of Desktone, that’s the path most CIOs will take.
I had lunch with Paul yesterday (Blue Ginger in Wellesley – if you go, you have to try the Alaskan butterfish). It seems to me the next few years would provide tremendous opportunities for his company, which provides desktops as a service. After all, that’s one of the main areas this year’s CIO Hall of Famers were enthusiastic about. Gaffney (himself a member of the CIO Hall of Fame) pointed out that this group represented not the market but the vanguard. CIOs like Blockbuster’s Keith Morrow, PG&E’s Pat Lawicki, Bechtel’s Geir Ramleth and Motorola’s (former) Patty Morrison might advocate and take bold action into uncharted territory, because they really do understand the new technologies and business models and can successfully calculate the benefits and risks. But the vast majority of CIOs will try to work within the parameters of what they know to ride out the current economic storm.
This is completely understandable – and even, I suppose, prudent. It would be foolhardy for a CIO to advocate a path that he or she didn’t have a pretty good grasp of.
What this suggests to me is CIOs should be finding out as much as they can as quickly as they can about things like desktop virtualization, software as a service and cloud computing. Because in business as in the law, when it comes to missteps and missed opportunities, ignorance is no excuse.
Paul Gaffney
Paul Gaffney led IT and supply chain efforts at Staples and built OfficeDepot.com's e-commerce site. He's now rolling out new desktop as a service capabilities as COO of Desktone.
2 comments January 9, 2009
