Challenges
As a CIO your company is facing the following technology problems:
Insatiable Demand
Requests for new technology are overloading what your team can realistically manage. There is no central prioritization process and technology projects are started (and stopped) randomly versus strategically.
Wasteful Duplication
Dedicated software applications for each group (sales, marketing, HR, support, engineering, accounting, etc.) often have overlapping features, service the same processes (HR needs employee data – but it’s in the accounting app already) and maintains the same data (sales and customer service but each has a different system). Each system is EXPENSIVE – but they could be combined.
No Coordination
Each department has their unique system needs and each is treated like an island. Little centralized planning is done that identifies common BUSINESS problems which require similar technology solutions. It takes an “informed” CIO leader who can identify and coordinate the common critical needs.
No Investment Insights
IT often doesn’t know where all the money goes. Renegade departments start technology projects and purchase non-budgeted SaaS products on their own. Often, they abandoned the project, but the company keeps paying for the SaaS – ouch! (blindfold pilot heading into Everest).
Alternatives suck
You could continue to attend dozens of “the same different meetings” to coordinate mountains of tech requests.
You could try to use multiple manually created spreadsheets to track applications, projects, and costs. Unfortunately, they are seldom updated, not shared and error-prone.
IT has project management software – but it takes a master’s degree to understand. You need something simple, on the ground, in real-time.
So, how can you shape demands for technology, reduce costly duplication, easily coordinate between teams, and know all the planned and unplanned investments, without “mo meetings,” being stuck in Excel Hell or relying on tools that requires a master’s degree to run?
Maybe you should consider Virtual CIO Management Software.
Maybe you should consider…
