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CIOs must adapt to changing business landscape or become obsolete reports Advanced 365

CIOs must adapt to changing business landscape or become obsolete reports Advanced 365

New report highlights the need for CIOs to focus more on business strategy and less on operational maintenance

28 May 2014 – CIOs must play a leading role in driving business growth and innovation by recommending and deploying new technologies - as opposed to managing legacy IT systems - if their roles are to remain relevant. This is a key finding in a new report - ‘The CIO as Manager, Leader and Entrepreneur’- published today by Advanced 365 (Advanced).

The report was written by eminent IT strategist David Smith (Chief Executive, Global Futures and Foresight) and Nathaniel Suda, (Consulting Director, Advanced 365) and draws on recent research examining trends in IT leadership management conducted by analyst firms including Gartner, Forrester and PwC.

The report highlights the role of the CIO as the manager, leader and entrepreneur. It identifies a rapid increase in the number of organisations that are appointing Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) and Chief Strategic Information Officers (CSIOs), in order to benefit from the digitisation of operations, products and services. It is predicted that one quarter of all companies worldwide will have appointed a Chief Digital Officer by 2015.

The creation of these new roles highlights widespread board-level concern regarding traditional IT investment models and the role played by CIOs in instigating technical changes in order to drive business growth. In many organisations, eighty five percent of total IT outlay is focused on maintaining existing systems, leaving just fifteen percent for new initiatives that support organisations on a strategic level.

Neil Cross, Managing Director from Advanced 365, comments: “IT departments are often described as cautious, risk averse and only interested in operational matters. The appointment of CDOs and CSIOs indicates that many senior management teams are frustrated by the fact that IT remains centred on day-to-day maintenance as opposed to driving change and growth.”

“The report indicates that between forty and fifty percent of CIOs have yet to move beyond researching innovation-driving technologies such as mobile, the cloud and social media – and this is particularly worrying. CIOs need to work harder to meet the dual challenges of recommending technologies aligned to business strategy while continuing to ensure the smooth running of infrastructure and systems.”

The report includes the results of a survey of 382 IT and non-IT business professionals. When asked if IT is primarily a maintenance function as opposed to an innovation engine, 39 percent of IT professionals agreed versus 54 percent of non-IT professionals.

Cross concludes, “If CIOs can re-establish themselves as expert advisers to the board, trusted to make IT recommendations that are closely mapped to business strategy then the perception of IT will almost certainly change for the better. We work closely with CIOs and their teams to help them meet their strategic and operational goals and ensure that IT projects provide a tangible return on investment.”

The report – ‘The CIO as Manager, Leader and Entrepreneur’ - addresses the age of the technology start-up and the assumption that high-technology and entrepreneurship are synonymous. It concludes that the CIO needs to function as a manager, modernising systems via migration to the cloud; a leader, who finds new ways to use collaboration technologies to connect people; and an entrepreneur, who can integrate technology with strategy to provide tangible business benefits.

The report is available from Advanced 365’s website, via the following link:

http://www.advancedcomputersoftware.com/collateral/365/register.php?doc=cio-thought-leadership-2014.pdf

An accompanying image can be downloaded via the following link:

http://www.advancedcomputersoftware.com/365/files/images/496058.jpg

-ends-

Notes to Editor

About Advanced

365 www.advancedcomputersoftware.com/365

Advanced 365 is a leading provider of IT managed services and business innovation solutions. Working with organisations within the private, public and charity sectors, Advanced 365 aligns technology to its clients’ business needs in order to improve their operational efficiencies, help control costs, enhance productivity and enable growth.

Core offerings include:

- Managed services focusing on the delivery of IT services including: outsourcing, cloud computing, application development and support, and unified communications.

- Business innovations to make legacy systems relevant to today’s business environment. Advanced 365 provides a CIO advisory service which supports the deployment of technologies including modernisation, legacy system migration, application development, applications support and data cleansing.

Advanced 365 is a Microsoft Gold Competency Partner and works closely with other industry leading vendors and developers including Redhat, Gamma Telecom, IBM and Oracle.

Advanced 365 is a division of Advanced Computer Software Group plc, a leading supplier of software and IT services to the health, care and business services sectors.

For further information, interviews and photography contact:

Liz Ebbrell and Nick Hardy, Advanced Computer Software Group

pr@advancedcomputersoftware.com

01625 856 513/07917 634 705

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Advanced .