At the recent Econique CIO summit, where the old chestnut of  “the future role of the CIO” held centre stage, some of the presentations were spot on whilst others fell short.

For example, I attended a discussion on the topic of Unified Communications led by the CIO of Halcrow, and whilst very interesting, it lacked the real detail I personally prefer-- such as what were the bottom line savings and the challenges he faced, and how were they overcome?  These sorts of insights will help fellow CIO’s when preparing their business cases for similar projects.

Jane Scott gave a lively presentation on collaboration with insight into how her company, Baker Hughes, leverages data collected on various assignments to enable her organisation to become a trusted adviser to customers. Jane also pointed out how the company set up problem-solving groups with both vendors and customers. Her advice to attendees: When entering into relationships try for the true win/win but always have a workable exit strategy to hand.

Simon Lafosse, principal of one of the U.K.’s leading IT executive search firms, La Fosse Associates, offered an insight into what were the key attributes to CIO success. He advised that 80% of the success was still determined by performance in role, but that CIO’s also need to market themselves and to be in the right place at the right time. Finally, he also suggested that success should not be judged solely on your title, but on your own happiness and that of your family-- a nice twist on the work-life balance paradigm.

Day two opened with an interesting trio of speakers. Firstly, Myron Hrycyk, of Severn Trent Water, spoke about the contribution the CIO could make in a post-recession world.  Interestingly, he referred to research carried out by Feeny and Willcocks in 2001 on the pressures facing the CIO demonstrating that these pressures-- including increasing business dependence on IT and the need to focus on core competencies--  hadn’t really changed in almost a decade. Myron then gave some interesting insights into the challenges utilities face in a regulated world. Whilst some of his propositions, such as the inevitability of cloud computing, strike me as following the analysts too closely, others--such as making more use of the knowledge of your key suppliers-- was enlightening.

Martin McCormack gave a very informative and candid presentation on how he used the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) at Beaumont Hospital to help him identify where he needed to turn around what the the hospital executive committee perceived as a failing IT department. CMM also allowed him to secure additional funding against a backdrop of budget cuts in the U.K. National Health service.

The theme of IT in the public sector continued with the presentation by Stephan Conway, interim CIO at Manchester City Council, who addressed the issue of IT governance. He opened with the not-widely know statistic that 80% of U.K. government IT projects either fail outright or finish with suboptimal results. He further went on to say that IT should be concerned by this as poor performance will hurt both public and private enterprises making it harder to gain investment for future projects. In the worse case, people will lose their jobs as firms become LESS efficient. Stephen argued that only through rigorous governance can IT identify failing projects and then must have the courage to kill them! However, he was quick to point out that governance doesn’t mean blindly following procedure but rather ensuring that it is delivering the expected outcome. I was let down by the final comment that we all should buy an Ipad and make it part of the corporate network or face being replaced by a 20-something, as it seemed inconsistent with the topic at hand.

Andrew Bryan, Associate Director at Henley Centre for Customer Management, closed the day with a discussion of how social media is changing the way companies will engage with their customers. The premise was that trust was generally eroding and that people are more likely to “trust” like-minded people than traditional authority figures like governments, banks and the police. That is, more people trust Tesco than these established organisations!

The web has enabled consumers to move from information that is being “pushed” to them from companies through traditional marketing channels to a model where data is “pulled”  from them, he said, increasingly including the opinions of others on social media.  As a result, companies will need to both carefully monitor brand perception in this new channel as well harness it to get more intimate with their customer base. However, he warned that consumers are very savvy and will easily see old tactics being used in new media guise and only true interaction will succeed.

All in all, another well-run conference by Econique with a mix of new ideas and the same old issues facing CIOs. Perhaps, that says more about our profession than the speakers.