8 ways to stay ahead of changes to the CIO’s role
The role of the CIO must constantly metamorphose with new technologies and new demands. You may still deploy software and hardware, but that’s no longer the bulk of your position. Instead, systems management and optimization are just the basics.
Today’s CIOs increasingly take their place in strategy initiatives alongside the rest of the c-suite. They’re responsible for managing the end-customer experience, for leveraging analytics, and for assisting with innovations in other departments.
These 8 hacks will help you prep for these changes and get ahead.
Develop a Big Data as a Service Model
The SaaS model has brought countless benefits to software products in every industry. Smoother paths to scalability and more regularity in revenue streams are just a couple of the reasons why the SaaS model has exploded. For the last couple of years, analytics service providers have found ways to repackage their services using this model as well.
Big Data as a Service (dare we call this BaDaaS?) is highly desirable for customers, who can consume data analytics in timely, user-friendly chunks. BaDaaS is a variable model that delivers software, data access, and/or services by a team of data scientists. You can bring this model to your organization by using it as a framework for interacting with multiple departments and c-suite execs. Understand what services or information they regularly need, come up with a delivery schedule, and follow through.
Become the Chief Data Officer
Whether you hire a Chief Data Officer, expand an existing employee’s responsibilities, or fill this role yourself, the fact is that you’re in charge of data. It’s time to get more involved with how your organization makes use of data.
Combine systems and resources to provide insights that go beyond historical reporting. Create more powerful management dashboards that help CEOs visualize not only KPIs but future projections and how to adapt. Make it your job to ensure the quality of all organizational data and to help implement its use.
Protect Data Scientists’ Man Hours
Anyone in charge of employing highly skilled people like data scientists is also tasked with how best to use their time. Data scientists can be a huge asset when their efforts are properly guided or a massive cost if they’re required to spend too much time on manual, repetitive data tasks.
Find tools that can automate some of these tasks, or ask your data scientists to report back to you with automation ideas and tools. The design, development, and deployment of a data warehouse can all be automated to more quickly make use of IoT data. Employing such methods will free up time for innovative, problem-solving tasks that really impact the bottom line (and make it clear to the CFO why this team is worth their pay).
Cut Down on Unnecessary Systems
It’s not the most fun job, but pruning dead weight systems shows initiative and a sensitivity towards ROI. Over time, various tools and technologies can add up.
• Are these systems still being used?
• Is there any overlap?
• Have newer tools made old ones unnecessary?
By setting up annual evaluations, you can not only cutback on software subscription costs but also streamline processes, and this results in time savings.
IT managers can easily get overwhelmed with managing multiple systems, so much so that they may struggle to identify new opportunities.
