The Proposition: CIOs have very effectively explained, to their enterprise executives, the business value and competitive advantage offered by IT.
Teams: Each team had an analyst, a CEO or CFO, a CIO and a vendor representative.
Rules: Team members had five minutes to present their case, followed by a closing summation by each team captain. Conference delegates then cast their votes to determine the winning team.
The Malaysia Debate
By Mary Anne Tan
Yes team captain, MUI dotcom’s Stan Singh, kicked off the positive side of the argument by asserting that CIOs have indeed communicated well to the CEOs, the business value of IT. He said the snag is that IT has usually been left out of the high level management discussions in the first place. “I tell my CEO that not all technology can solve the company’s problems because sometimes, the problem is the people. If IT was included from the beginning, as CIO I’d be able to pinpoint where the problem areas are,” he said.
Fellow affirmative team member, Affin Bank’s Azlan Rashid said that CIOs have evolved from being mere ‘techies’ to business strategists and chief architects of the company’s technological transformation. “And since we are made to manage more of the business itself we should rightly be called CEOs,” he jokingly said. Rashid pointed out that the CIO and the CEO need to be ‘joined at the hip’ for IT to really work in an organisation.
Engaging relations
Sunway’s Cheah Kok Hoong stressed, for the yes team, that today’s CIOs enjoy more engaging relationships with their CEOs—one that’s reflects the confidence of the business users. “The relationship has to incorporate the right business lingo, not ‘techie babble’,” Cheah said. When the CIO talks to the CEO on the merits of business and IT alignment, that’s when then the buy-in comes in. Sunway Group’s founder Jeffrey Cheah acknowledged, “We embrace IT as a strategic infrastructural tool to promote effective communication and knowledge management.”
Taking up the baton for the yes team, Jason Bissell, from QlikView, argued that technology executives have evolved from CTO to CIO and, in the process, have indeed emerged as effective communicators of key business issues. “The top spend for today’s CIO is business intelligence or BI, not web 2.0,” Bissell said. “What’s more, while some see it as a battle, the CIO sees the CEO as his team-mate in leading the way forward.”
No team captain Bobby Varanasi, from IAOP, counter argued that most CEOs currently think CIOS are very distant or contentious. “The problem is that the CIO reckons the CEO doesn’t understand technology anyway, which makes it hard for him to state his case,” he said. Since it is hard to find a CEO who started as an IT programmer, Varanasi said the knowledge gap between the ‘tech ignorant CEO’ and the ‘tech savvy CIO’ would remain. “The CEO just wants to know the business model first and whether IT will reduce the company’s problems and move the business forward,” he said. “If the CIO does not know how to do just that, he will not get the buy-in needed.”
For the no side, Martin Gilliland, from Frost & Sullivan, said the IT shop was still seen as a cost centre while the marketing and the sales departments were the profit centres. He predicted that CIOs who report to revenue generating departments, like sales and marketing, ‘are doing a great thing’ because until IT becomes perceived as a profit generator, rather than a cost centre, CIOs won’t be appropriately relevant to the organisation.
Exec disconnect
No team member Dzofrain Azmi said there remained a disconnect between IT and business executives. “CIOs need to make it simple,” Azmi said. “Don’t tell me how, if we introduce cloud computing and if something fails you need to upgrade, just tell me—next year you will make twice as much money —that’s the business lingo that the CEO understands.” He said CIOs have to act as translators; too much IT jargon creates a closed community. The CIO must always translate IT into business achievements. “Change management communication takes time but IT moves faster than anyone can communicate new ideas, so CIOs must try to slow down and take time to explain,” Azmi said.
For the no case, James Young, from CommScope, said most CIOs “are still not there yet”, when it came to talking about business strategies and market risks. “Most board members are not technical and the CIO is not yet seen as part of the C-team,” he said. “CIOs are given a voice but usually they are not asked to be equal to other members of the C-team. They usually get the responsibility to implement the IT system after the project is approved. There is also no visible way to track IT implementation progress the way the marketing and sales departments do—by putting up a progress or achievement chart so everyone in the office knows whats happening. If you ask people in the trenches whether IT has done any good and the answer might be ‘no’ . This confirms that CIOs have failed to communicate their case effectively.”
The key message from the overall debate was that CIOs need to make a strong case for their continued involvement in the key decision making aspects of any business if they want to remain relevant to the organisations they serve. A count of Malaysian delegates’ votes showed the majority felt the yes team was more convincing.
The Singapore Debate
By Melissa Chua
Singapore’s debate provided a session of swashbuckling wit and razor sharp retorts.
Yes captain, Bob Dye, from Gartner, kicked off his team’s argument claiming that CIOs have already demonstrated IT ‘s value of to the organisation; the structure of most corporate hierarchies, has CIOs reporting directly to overall business heads. “CIOs are often given prominence, because they know what’s going on in the business,” said Dye. “CIOs are running the supply chain, the business processes and even back office functions. They wouldn’t be given these key roles if they were bad at their job.” Gartner research showed that turnover of CIO functions had declined over the past few years, while turnover for other C-level functions increased, Dye said, “If CIOs weren’t doing their job effectively, you would see the retention numbers going the other way.”
No team captain, Martin Gilliland, from Frost & Sullivan, downplayed the CIO’s importance in direct revenue generation. The CEO, said Gilliland, is a good business strategist, but not so well-informed about day-to-day business operations. “Reporting to the CEO hasn’t done a huge amount,” said Gilliland.
“I think the CIO should be reporting to sales and marketing or their equivalent, when you’re working for B2B, B2C or even government to constituent.” Only then, said Gilliland, would the CIO be ‘very specifically required to help with revenue generation and be relevant to the business.”
Gilliland added that CIOs and IT departments were very often measured in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, and were asked to implement projects without being part of sales and marketing discussions. He asked the audience if they had ever participated in business growth strategies. If the answer was no, said Gilliland, then CIOs could not have effectively explained IT’s competitive advantage to the C-suite.
CEO s are paid to lead
The yes team’s second speaker, Fairfax Business Media’s Andrew Smart, said CIOs should not report to sales and marketing, but to the CEO, who was paid to lead and understand the business. “If the CEO is not looking to you for guidance, you essentially have the wrong CEO,” said Smart.
The no team’s second speaker, Ispran Kandasamy, from Commscope, said CIOs were not taking an active enough role in spearheading business growth. “The issue here is not organisational structure,” he said. “Does your department have members that talk about ROI?” Kandasamy asked. “If the answer is no, then you haven’t communicated effectively with the board.”
Yes team member James Loo, from YCH, said it’s wrong to say CIOs were not involved in the business. “Take the implementation of ITIL in my company, for example,” he said. ” IT is responsible for implementing solutions to calculate profit and loss. Furthermore, having the CIO reporting to sales and marketing would demote the function of IT in the company, Loo said. “IT permeates the entire organisation,” he said. Loo said he talks with his company’s sales and marketing department once a month, as peers.
Eric Lam, from Symantec, the third no team member, said his CIO friends see their job as tough, in terms of balancing priorities, because they dislike being harbingers of doom. “The argument is not about how well you’ve done your job,” said Lam. “It’s about communication. Ask yourselves if it’s ever easy for you to get funding for a project. Why isn’t that aspect of your job a lot easier? If you consider that task difficult, then the level of communication with the board is not as effective as it could be.”
Great communicators?
David Brown, from Biz Performance, hailed CIOs as great communicators. “One of the biggest problems they face is having people working with them who don’t do their jobs,” said the yes team member . “Many CIOs who work with the management team don’t get the guidance and support they need.” Brown said his experience as a CIO required him to play a revenue generating role. “I was the one asked to put an online sales project in place because my company decided it was going into larger markets.”
Waleed Hanafi, from the Global Refund Group, the final no team speaker, asked: “Where is the intellectual framework for the job that we do?” he asked. “Every other job in the enterprise team has research and history, except the CIO. This role has come about because technology has blossomed faster than the enterprise’s ability to deal with it. There is no legitimacy around the role, it is a home grown position.”
A ‘crying kid’
The board will constantly ask the CIO why he needs funding for operations such as technical upgrades, and soon ‘viewed the CIO as a crying kid’ constantly asking for money, said Hanafi.
“The board is full of smart people who made the business, and you, the CIO, walk into the room, scared to hell that you’re going to make them look like idiots, talking about technical stuff they have no idea about.”
Hanafi elicited riotous laughter when he said: “The CIO is effectively excluded from the board because he doesn’t dress right, he doesn’t talk right and he doesn’t try to fit in with the
rest of the team that he’s trying to be a member of. It’s not about whether you’re doing a good job, the reality is you’re not wellliked by the people you work with!”
The inaugural Singapore debate ended in a wave of applause, and the audience responded with an emphatic yes, when asked if they had enjoyed the session. Final result: the no team emerged winners, garnering 83 per cent of the votes.
