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Managing My CXO

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DQI Bureau
New Update

The success of the IT department in any organization is

focally dependent on how the CIO personality merges with the organizational work

culture. Also crucial is the CIO creating a synergy with different business

units within the organization, which has the capacity of taking the business to

higher levels of goodwill and profitability.

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We feature Dr Jai Menon, Bharti; Arindam Bose, LG; Anand

Kumar, Monsanto; and Dr Rajesh Narang, Center for Railway Information System (CRIS)

in our current issue. We put all of them on the hot seat and asked

them their favorite strategies for working with other department managers.

Since all IT deployments are done for a certain department of

business, it is imperative for the CIO to take the right decision along with the

department head-the CFO, Chief Marketing officer, HR manager, Production

Manager.... even the CEO... All our CIOs for sure agree on the dual role a CIO

has to play with regard to being a technology visionary as well as a business

honcho.

Read on, as our CIOs spill their best-kept success secrets.

Jai Menon,

Group CIO and Corporate Director, Bharti Tele-Ventures

  • Designing

    the 3-year transformation platform, which cuts across the various BIZ

    (business) and INT (internal) platforms.

  • The

    Yearly plan, where IT in a key role plans to transform billing, HR,

    customer care and other functions in close coordination with the

    business.

  • After

    squaring in on a project, the control of the project is assigned to a

    business sponsor (a senior functionary of the concerned department)

    for its total ownership.

  • The

    strength of alignment-A major part of our IT department is the 'Solutions

    Engagement' group, which talks with the department's business

    people in their own language.

  • As a

    part of our knowledge management initiative, we institutionalize all

    good practices and make the projects standard across the country.

  • A practice followed

    throughout business engagement-Progress in every stage in the

    project has to be signed off by the Project Management Officer (PMO).

Arindam Bose, Head,

IT, LG

  • Start with the big

    picture-annually; the organization's Key Performance Index (KPI)

    is frozen at the top level. Translated into market share,

    Production-domestic sales and export etc.

  • The steps to achieve the

    KPI with monthly plan-working on a top-down approach, the IT

    department along with other departments decides the monthly plan of

    action.

  • Discussing the

    challenges at each step-a yearly, 3-day strategy meeting between

    seniors from each department. The 'Meltin' is the time to make the

    IT roadmap for the year.

  • A clear consensus is

    arrived at to reduce the gap between expectations and deliverables-unless

    the project is urgent, we work with a story-board and get it signed

    off to maintain clarity of goals.

  • The IT department takes charge-we

    begin with extensive documentation and start the project. A pilot run

    is imperative for customer feedback and leads the way for full

    rollout.

Rajesh

Narang

, Chief

System Manager, CRIS
  • Winning

    Awards-to convince the CEOs and CXOs about the quality of our work.

    This gets our work validated on national and global standards. It

    improves our as well as the company's image.

  • The CFO,

    CTO and others are also given the awards, citation and recognition

    along with us when a project succeeds.

  • Take

    them along in IT Seminars-CFOs must be fully involved, given time,

    proper hearing and provided with convincing replies to their queries.

  • Avoid

    locking horns with CFO on open versus product centric procurement.

    Successful companies will not go for just lowest priced product but

    ones that will carry them into the future.

  • CIO teaches technology

    to the CEO and learns business from him. Both meet on a one-to-one

    basis and invest time on each other.

Jasmine Kaur in Delhi Goutam Das in Bangalore,

Shrikanth G
in Chennai

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