Accenture Study Unveils Characteristics of High Performance CIO

A global management consulting firm, Accenture, assets that CIOs considered high performer demonstrate excellence in three key traits – innovation, agility and execution. This was a statement from a presentation titled “Positioning IT as a Strategic Asset” that was based on insights from an Accenture third global IT performance research program. The programme is a global effort to measure how IT organizations perform.
According to Mr. Dandy Ogiugo, the Accenture Executive who delivered the presentation, the goals of the CIOs are to drive enterprise value from IT and to manage the IT function as a business.
He pointed out that the consumer landscape is changing globally – through Information Technology, people are a lot more knowledgeable, more demanding and more empowered to expect higher quality for goods and services they consume. As a consequence of this changing landscape, CIOs are being forced to become innovative in how they manage scare resources and to recalibrate their efforts to drive more enterprise value through IT while trying striving to meet C-suite expectations. Specifically, CIOs need to maximize value from discretionary spend, remove complexity from their IT portfolio and use IT investments to produce greater business value for the business.
Given this context, Mr. Ogiugo stressed that CIOs that want to become high performer must excel in three key fundamentals namely IT Execution, IT Innovation and IT Agility. Leaders in IT Execution have active governance programs and involve the business as partners in IT strategy; they use metrics to ensure effective cost/benefit management of IT investments and manage IT as a business. Leaders in IT Innovation consider IT a strategic asset for competitive advantage by applying a continuous innovation and collaboration mindset to the deployment of new technology. Finally, leaders in IT Agility are effective at aligning IT resources to business requirements and priorities. They integrate their optimized application portfolio internally and externally, and they seek technologies that provide dynamic access to Infrastructure.
The Accenture IT research further highlighted that CIOs that excel in the three fundamentals have web-enabled 42% more of their customer interactions; are twice as likely to view workforce performance as a priority; are eight times more likely to consistently measure the benefits realize from strategic IT initiative; and spend 25% more annually on developing and implementing new applications rather than on maintaining existing ones.
The IT research also noted that these CIOs are taking a structured approach towards building core capabilities in nine (9) areas namely Strategic IT Alignment, IT Governance, IT Architecture, Information Technology, Workforce & Resource Management, Information & Technology Security, Solution Delivery, Service Management & Operations, and Outsourcing.
In conclusion, the presentation urged CIO to take a stand to improve the agility, innovation and execution of their IT organisation by molding IT to the needs of the business, and defining a plan to bridge the gap between their desired end-state and current state.