CIO Steve Olive isn’t handing out any gold stars to IT for providing good PC support or networking service at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems. Consistently reliable and excellent IT service should be a given, he says.
What businesses need and IT should be providing are innovative solutions to business challenges. That means creatively applying technology to produce goods more efficiently and at a lower cost, to sell and service more of them, and to do so at the highest possible profit margins.
It also means using IT to create new products and services and even whole new business models, says Darryl Lemecha, CIO at Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint Inc. Because technology is embedded in just about everything a company does, “technology strategy and business strategy are now one,” he says.
Kathleen McNulty, CIO at The Schwan Food Co. in Marshall, Minn., puts it this way: “It’s not about IT automating the business anymore. It’s about innovating it, improving it.”
So, forget about IT supporting the business. IT leaders are focused on reinventing the business, starting with the IT organization.
Read more at: Computerworld