Tony Scott on Leadership in Today’s Enterprise

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What it Means to be a CIO Today
“CIOs increasingly have the best view of all of the things that are going on across the whole business,” Tony notes.

This point is often overlooked, in my opinion. Because businesses rely so heavily on IT, there most likely is not a business executive who is not working with a CIO on one or more initiatives. This puts CIOs in a unique position, not only to foster collaboration among disparate groups, but also to flag potential redundancies in spending as well as conflicting technology requirements.

The Increasing Demands of IT
It has become clear in the last several years that IT is mission critical to business. Nowhere is this more evident than around data collection and analysis. Today, data is being collected at an alarming rate, and business leaders are anxious to interpret it in order to find new trends and gain new insights so their businesses can compete better. However, it is not just the quantity of data but the quality that matters.

The reality is, most data that is collected will be ignored or thrown away. IT has a unique opportunity to provide new tools for helping business leaders make sense of this information overload by providing a clear, rational approach to analysis.

The Strategic CIO
In the past, the IT mantra was “cut costs.” However, one of the things that gnaw at CIOs who are striving to act strategically is that typically 80% of their budgets go toward maintaining existing systems, while 20% go toward new development. What if you could flip that? New business problems and areas of growth are being uncovered every day. Nevertheless, unless you can cut the cost of maintaining current systems, IT cannot adequately address these new areas, which creates the potential for missing out on new business opportunities.

IT is Transformative—Embrace It
“All of our businesses are changing,” Tony observes, “and the question is not, ‘Is it going to change?’ It’s ‘How is it going to change, and how fast?’”

What are needed are systems that allow companies to take advantage of market conditions and market opportunities more quickly. It is all about agility and a shorter time to market. In addition, it is about systems that support this kind of environment.

There has never been a better time to be a CIO. The leadership opportunities are abundant.

For more information and to watch other interesting videos, you can visit the Mission Critical Enterprise site.