Inside the Short Hills Live Exchange, November 2009

A few months ago in Boston when I heard Bruce Rogow, former Gartner Research Fellow (who speaks regularly with CIOs as Principal of Vivaldi Advisory Service and Odyssey Partners program), discuss the need for “alternative delivery vehicles” such as SaaS, mobile apps, “extreme virtualization” and cloud computing to meet demand-side expectations, I thought it was leading-edge thinking: necessary, but not yet mainstream.

But when I heard Rogow again discuss this topic with attendees at our recent live exchange in Short Hills, N.J., I realized that services are already an IT reality — and CIOs in the room understood the imperative perfectly.

It wasn’t a few months’ time that had made the difference, nor was it the sophistication of the CIOs at either event. The shift demonstrates the speed at which IT change is taking place — speed that turns a good idea into implementation seemingly overnight. By the time a concept is discussed at a meeting somewhere, leading-edge practitioners are already demonstrating their results. The flip side of that is, if you’re not constantly taking action, your competitors are.

Another powerful example of IT’s growing importance to the business was this: According to Rogow, “IT is now 20 percent to 70 percent of a firm’s brand.” This means that your Web sites, customer and employee self-service options, problem resolution, invoices, statements and shipping documents — all driven by technology services and processes — are what define and differentiate your business right now. IT is the brand; think about it.

I could tell Rogow’s comments resonated with attendees, based on comments, like those from Mike Petrisko, VP and CIO at Hill International. Petrisko, featured in our Smart Practices article this month, says he was “hired to move the firm forward.” In his view, there are no excuses for not meeting business demand; a CIO’s job is “to make it happen.”

Several CIOs said they are struggling with global organizations that aren’t cohesive and nimble. But Mark Schlesinger, CIO at Broadridge Financial Solutions Ltd. — whose business processes an average 3 million trades per day for its financial clients — told his peers that if IT can differentiate the company, it will take it to the next level. But if IT services are routine, resource-draining or not core, they should be outsourced. “Put your resources into innovation and revenue generation,” he advised.

For example, he said, CIOs need to let business executives know what virtualization can offer — in their own terms. The message should be about “better service levels, more resilience for failover, and capex savings. The CEO wants to see bottom-line results, not new technology. VoIP is still just a phone at the end of the day,” he said.

Driving the point home once more, Trevor Bunker, VP, IT Transformation at CA Inc., quoted a really good Accenture study that reports: The average organization spends about 12 percent of its time fixing preventable problems; high performers in contrast spend only 5 percent of their time fixing, and low performers spend 16 percent.

If IT is the brand, where do you want to be on this continuum?