As we dive into the New Year, a myriad of IT trends are unfolding — from Amazon’s success with the Kindle Fire, to Facebook’s expected IPO and RIM’s ongoing business challenges — that make it easy to be distracted. But from a macro viewpoint, there are only two key metrics that require your laser focus: keeping pace with technology and staying relevant in your market. Everything else is background noise.

That’s not to say you and your staff should ignore the astounding rate at which iPhones and Androids are entering your workplace. And you should clearly be concerned about the recent security breaches affecting 24 million Zappos customers.

On a daily basis, however, you — like CIO Larry Bonfante — are probably finding ways to incorporate mobile devices and social media into your enterprise and moving back-end systems to the cloud. At the end of the day, as Larry writes, you aren’t just buying technology, you must answer the question: “What matters to our clients and consumers?” (You can re-read Larry’s Smart Enterprise Exchange blogs for other tips on IT leadership here.)

Nowhere is the customer more of a No. 1 priority than in the retail industry — and that mandate is only growing stronger. At the National Retail Federation’s annual conference in January, several speakers addressed ways that social media, business intelligence and mobile devices will make or break retailers in the coming year — and it’s not just CIOs who are involved in these strategies. DSW’s Harris Mustafa, EVP Supply Chain and Merchandise Planning and Allocation, spoke about smart ways to leverage customer data and mobile technologies, as did several CMOs, brand managers and CTOs. Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru looked back and ahead at key retail IT trends.

We want to help you stay focused, too, and are offering expert advice on decision making this month and next on Smart Enterprise Exchange. In addition to Pete DeLisi’s thoughtful comments about decision making in the age of speed, book author and Babson Professor Tom Davenport will provide community members with a preview of his upcoming book, Judgment Calls, next month. Tom and co-author Brook Manville discuss organizations that have successfully tapped the diverse and deep knowledge of their people — often using collaborative technologies — to build an organizational decision-making capability.

We also feature an insightful Q&A with Randy Gaboriault, CIO at Christiana Care Health System — another industry sector where IT is making dramatic changes to everyday business. In recognition of this important sector, we've added a Healthcare common interest group to the Smart Enterprise Exchange. Please join it and post discussions, comments and ideas to share with other like-minded IT executives.

How is your business staying relevant in its market and using technology for customer satisfaction? Join the conversation and share your wins and thoughts with your peers on the Exchange.

Paula Klein

Editor and Community Manager

Smart Enterprise Exchange

Editor's Note

When I first began my career in journalism, a mentor told me that the danger of specializing on a "beat" is that everything looks urgent all the time. In other words, when you focus too narrowly on one thing, you may lose your wider vision and perspective.

If there was ever a time to try a new approach that takes a broader view, it's probably now. In my experience, it's essential to walk in another's shoes and see what's needed from his or her perspective. CIOs need to do this with their business peers, evaluating situations as a businessperson would — not as an IT specialist. Just this week, for instance, I was speaking to the chief of the European division of a U.S.-based company about his dispersed workforce.

Like everyone, economic pressures are making his employees and customers nervous; he wants to reassure them and keep them on track selling products and services. This executive isn't in IT, but IT solutions would address his concerns. Better forecasting tools, collaborative networking and virtualized servers can help him maintain his financial goals and still have budget left for innovation. Is his CIO ready with tools that are easy for the executive to use as well as his global teams? Is the payback clear?

To tackle these issues at your business, we invite you to review two white papers on Smart Enterprise Exchange this month. The first, "Metrics That Matter," by Peter Waterhouse, Senior Principal of Enterprise IT Management at CA, offers ways to demonstrate and report IT's contribution to the business. I have the European division leader in mind when Waterhouse notes that presenting business executives "with reports detailing server uptime or problem-resolution time delivers absolutely nothing." A more relevant metric, Waterhouse suggests, might be to track the percentage of ideas submitted to a discussion board and to offer incentives accordingly. Or, instead of simply reporting IT help desk figures, CIOs can let business leaders know the percentage of customer problems resolved within agreed service levels and link them to customer satisfaction — a far more insightful and useful metric, he says.

The second paper, "Masters of IT Economics," provides best-practice examples of three CIOs who are keeping costs in check while continuing to innovate in the current economy — a tough task, as you well know. The three IT executives are: Ahmed Abdelmoteleb at GE Money Australia; Kamal Bherwani, CIO of New York City's Health & Human Services (HHS) agency; and AXA Group's Senior VP of Technology Architecture & Development, Antonio DiCaro.

I hope that the perspectives of our subject-matter experts — on the Exchange site and at our live and online events — will continue to help sharpen your business focus. Let me know some ways that IT is proving its value at your enterprise.

Paula Klein
Editor
Smart Enterprise Exchange
editor@smartenterpriseexchange.com