By Suzana Ways That CIOs Can Introduce Innovation Into The Business
Quick question: what is the #1 job of a CIO? Hmm, good question, eh? Although this should really be part of the definition of information technology, I’m pretty sure that we could sit around and debate just exactly what is the #1 job of a CIO all day; however, I’m also pretty sure that we could agree that bringing innovation into the business has to be one of the top jobs of both the CIO and the entire IT department. Now the big question is just exactly how should we go about doing this?
Say Hello To Mr. Tablet
I for one believed that when tablet computers first showed up that they were no more than very fancy toys. I mean really, a laptop could do so much more – who would ever use a tablet for doing real work?
Considering that 32 million iPad tablets were sold in 2011, clearly I was wrong. The role of the CIO is to see beyond the cool technology and to look for ways that tablets can be used to make the company run smarter and run faster.
Good places to look are anywhere where paper processes exist – they are prime candidate to be replaced with tablet usage. Additionally, take a look for types of employees who may respond well to using a tablet. Sales is a great place to start. They generally don’t do a lot of typing and they may find a tablet makes it easier to share a product video with a customer.
One Communication System To Rule Them All
Take just a moment to consider all of the different ways that employees at your company choose to communicate with each other: video, voice, instant messaging, and email. Now ask yourself why you have a separate system for each of these forms of communication.
One of a CIOs big challenges is to find ways to pull these different systems together into a single unified business communication solution. Oh yeah, make sure that it supports mobile communication also.
The ultimate goal of this activity is for the CIO to make it easier for employees to collaborate. The more of this that can happen, then more innovation can occur at the company and that’s going to make the CEO very happy.
What All Of This Means For You
Every business looks to their IT department to lead the way when it comes to evaluating new technologies that have shown up in the IT sector. New and innovative ideas can come from these types of evaluations and so the CIO needs to make sure that he or she is out in front leading the charge.
Two such technologies that a CIO should be having the IT department look into include tablet computing and converged communication systems. The tablet wave is almost upon us and taking the time now to understand how tablets can be used within the business will be the key to staying ahead of this new technology. CEOs are always interested in finding ways to help the different parts of the company do a better job of collaborating and the arrival of converged voice, video, and data communications systems now makes this possible.
Yes, the life of a CIO is busy. However, making the time to do the proper evaluation of new technologies is a critical part of the job and is key to the importance of information technology. Do this task right, and you will have shown the entire IT department how to remind the rest of the company just how valuable IT really is.
