CIOs and IT directors still not appreciated by the board

That’s among key findings of research by IT business management provider Touchpaper. It also finds 81% of saying that this prevents them from achieving real power in the boardroom. Beyond this, while just over half (54%) of the manufacturing companies surveyed have KPIs to measure how IT supports strategic business objectives, 92% either have no systems to track and measure performance, or are still fully or partially relying on non-automated measures such as spreadsheets The results illustrate that one of the biggest challenges facing CIOs today is the need to justify their role. While the executive board feels it understands the contribution that departments such as sales, finance and marketing make to the business, the true value of IT still remains a mystery, says Touchstone. “IT plays an absolutely core role in organisations today, but all too often, the board still fails to fully understand quite how important its contribution to the bottom line is,” says Graham Ridgway, CEO of Touchpaper. “However, CIOs and IT directors can also be their own worst enemies, allowing themselves and their departments to be seen as the ‘tech guys in the basement’, rather than business leaders with the expertise and insight to be high-level executives. The way that IT is run has a huge strategic impact on how companies remain competitive and manage organisational change. I firmly believe that the status of the IT department needs to be elevated in order to reflect this.”