DO CIOS NEED HELP?

CIO’s have a lot on their minds – a never-ending stream of priorities both strategic and tactical that must be managed. No matter how hard you work, it’s difficult to get to it all.   At least that was my experience…

I recently completed my 2nd acting CIO role. Both were in growing organizations whose products and services were online –making IT very strategic to the business. My biggest challenge was that although I quickly built an IT plan aligned with business goals and a very clear vision of where we needed to head, the urgent and critical task and projects really filled up my day. The list of important, but not yet urgent initiatives was an ever growing pile of work that I could not seem to get to. My staff was out of bandwidth too and not always senior enough to assist with certain items.

As I exited the 2nd role, I wondered…Do CIO’s need HELP?

The CIO job is hard – I think one of the most difficult jobs in business today. Your business peers and management often lack a realistic understanding of the challenges IT deals with on a day to day basis, and the technical depth to comprehend what it takes to meet their needs from a cost, schedule, and labor perspective. This leaves CIOs with a huge job on their hands to both contribute to company’s strategic direction while ensuring ongoing tactical execution. It’s a difficult job.

As a CIO, do you wish you had some senior ‘help’? If you did – what would they do for you?

Here are some things I’d pick:

Execution Assistance: Key projects aren’t moving fast enough – and you don’t have time to drive them. I would like strong, experienced project and program management that can quickly grasp business intent and identify and remove barriers to progress to get projects back on track, completed and deployed.

Progress on those almost urgent priorities:  While my team is focused on urgent business and operational priorities, it would be great to have someone giving us forward progress in areas such as Audit Compliance, Disaster Recovery, IT Process Definition, and Product Upgrades.

Strategic groundwork: As CIO you are being stretched in many directions and don’t always have staff members with a strategic perspective. Seasoned assistance on strategic research, financial analysis, process evaluation, and compliance assessments would have really helped me to drive decision making or process change.

Technology alternatives: With all the competing priorities, it is hard to keep up with technology changes. It would be great to have assistance with evaluation and analysis of technology and product alternatives to provide the groundwork for technology solution decisions.

Sounding board for the tough problems:  Sometimes I just wished I had some senior talent who knew enough about my business to talk over some of the really tough issues. I just wanted the benefit of someone with a different set of experiences to brainstorm with without political or morale impact.

With this sort of assistance, I believe I could have achieved more of my strategic goals…and spent less time up at night thinking about what I was not getting accomplished.

I would be interested in your thoughts on this and on our new CIO Assist service offering.

Please see our brief at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/598a2cb315d5db14ee3dc2d1/t/598a2e8cfc01552c2f532d3d/1283971058011/CIO+Assist+100908.pdf

 

SCGi Receives California Multiple Award Schedule (CMAS) Contract

Anaheim, CA (August 10, 2010) - Shimasaki Consulting Group, Inc. (SCGi), a professional IT consulting firm, was accepted as an authorized vendor with the California Multiple Award Schedule (CMAS) Contract program, offering a complete suite of IT services including IT strategy development, application and infrastructure services and IT governance and staffing.
 
 "SCGi is excited about the opportunity to partner with California State and local government agencies through the CMAS program to help meet their business objectives through the most effective and innovative use of technology," says SCGi President Rod Shimasaki. "Our professionals bring experience with leading technology companies like Hewlett Packard and IBM to offer California agency buyers best in class solutions with the flexibility and affordability of a more nimble company."
 
The acceptance of SCGi as a CMAS provider allows California government agencies to gain quick and easy access to purchasing the professional IT consulting services offered by SCGi.  Vendors must pass through a comprehensive review process in order to be accepted to the CMAS program.  California State and local buyers save time and reach better purchasing decisions by procuring through the pre-approved list of CMAS suppliers.

SCGi is classified by the State of California as a certified small business for-profit corporation and has provided IT consulting services to clients in a wide range of industries including but not limited to aerospace, automotive, energy, entertainment, finance, insurance, and online services.

For more information on SCGi, please go to www.consultscgi.com.



Please check out our IT Value Assessment Service!!

SCGi's primary focus is helping your business be more successful.

Whenever we engage with a new customer, our first order of business is to make sure we understand your business and the issues that are inhibiting your success. We need to do this quickly - but thoroughly in order to ensure we are solving the right problem when we engage to assist you.

We have found that the results of this process are very useful for company management as well because our objective data collection provides valuable insights into the degree of alignment that exists between business and IT and where the key gaps and opportunties exist. These are insights that may not be identified by company executives or employees who are too close to the situation.

This process has proved so valuable that we are standardizing it and calling it IVA - IT Value Assessment. Please take a look - we are interested in your feedback.

  

 

Rod Shimasaki

President, SCGi