How Can a CIO Advisory Assist in IT Budget
When navigating IT budget planning and optimization, it’s important to strike the right balance between cost reduction measures and positioning your organization for new growth. It’s a process that needs to be continually managed and will require the support of your entire enterprise leadership team. Often, this is the point where a CIO advisory can assist.
The CIO advisory is a business-focused professional with deep technology expertise and extensive experience helping businesses align their business strategy through technological innovation. They’re also highly experienced at guiding IT functions through the growing pains that many experience, particularly when they’re trying to break free from their internal service function roots. They’re also useful for businesses that don’t have a full-time chief information officer, yet are experiencing rapid growth and require an interim leadership resource to guide IT through the transition.
A CIO advisory helps IT departments find ways to deliver more value to the organization. They’re experts at helping IT leaders identify and prioritize IT projects that can transform the business, then develop a roadmap that can be used for both IT and non-IT decision makers to support funding decisions.
How Can a CIO Advisory Assist in IT Budget Planning and Optimization?
In addition, a CIO advisory can help IT executives manage the process of reducing IT costs without sacrificing services or impacting customer satisfaction. This is a difficult task that requires a clear understanding of the business, current IT investments, and the future potential for IT to drive additional value. A good CIO advisor will also have the ability to provide a clear and concise breakdown of how each proposed project can be measured, from both an IT costs perspective as well as a business value perspective.
It’s no secret that CIOs are being asked to reduce IT budgets and are facing increased pressure from non-IT decision makers. The fact is that IT must continue to focus on its core mission of enabling business capabilities efficiently while providing valuable business insights through data and technology. However, if there is too much emphasis on disciplined IT cost management and not enough on the strategic use of IT to keep the enterprise competitive, it could quickly lead to a situation in which underfunded IT departments are unable to continue providing their necessary capabilities.
A good CIO advisor can work with the CIO and other IT department leaders to create a holistic vision of the future of IT and the business, then work to build confidence in the IT organization to demonstrate that they are capable of delivering on that vision. They’re also skilled at identifying the areas where cost optimization initiatives will make the most impact and working with the entire IT and business teams to manage these changes in a way that supports business growth. This is where the value of a CIO advisory really shines, particularly in the context of IT budget planning and optimization. This is why more and more organizations are engaging with a CIO advisory to help them get the most from their IT investment.