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June 24, 2008
Business-IT Alignment: Who Do that VooDoo?
At Tech Republic, the online resource for IT management information, executive editor Jason Hiner's article "Sanity check: What’s the difference between CIO and CTO?" relays the following quick guide.
Chief Information Officer
- Serves as the company’s top technology infrastructure manager
- Runs the organization’s internal IT operations
- Works to streamline business processes with technology
- Focuses on internal customers (users and business units)
- Collaborates and manages vendors that supply infrastructure solutions
- Aligns the company’s IT infrastructure with business priorities
- Developers strategies to increase the company’s bottom line (profitability)
- Has to be a skilled and organized manager to be successful
Chief Technology Officer
- Serves as the company’s top technology architect
- Runs the organization’s engineering group
- Uses technology to enhance the company’s product offerings
- Focuses on external customers (buyers)
- Collaborates and manages vendors that supply solutions to enhance the company’s product(s)
- Aligns the company’s product architecture with business priorities
- Develops strategies to increase the company’s top line (revenue)
- Has to be a creative and innovative technologist to be successful
Given that picture, the two top observations are these:
1. Infrastructure affects the bottom line (what you get to keep), while systems affect the top line (what you get to get). Of course, this goes a long way towards explaining why a CIO would report to a CFO, while a CTO would report to a CEO. More importantly, it indicates that strategic resourcing can be a CIO's calling card, but that strategic positioning can be a CTO's calling card.
2. Much less explicit but still clearly in evidence is the difference between being a chief operations technologist (a.k.a. CIO) and a chief business technologist (a.k.a. CTO). Naturally, the easy way of understanding how to assess their respective progress and performance would rely on understanding the consequences -- of not having good infrastructure (provision of operations technology) and not having good systems (provision of market interaction technology). But getting it figured out in positive terms has stumped the panel often enough and long enough that these job descriptions still have to get spelled out long after the hiring has been done . What's still needed furthermore to get the dust to settle is a plan of co-production between them. Whereas neither effort alone could get the whole job done, the combined efforts of the two groups would offer a company an office of Business-IT Alignment...
Posted by Malcolm Ryder at June 24, 2008 8:48 AM
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