Selling to the Chief Information Officer

If you sell to CIOs, what is it you think they do?  “The CIO assures we have the information we need to run the company," was how one of my first CEO clients described the job to me in 1984 when I was selling for Hewlett-Packard. In an industry known for change, the CIO’s job description hasn’t changed at all which is rather amazing. But what has changed is the CIO’s work environment.

Back in ’84, senior technology executives were about keeping computers up and running. Information systems didn’t extend beyond the corporate walls to customers, distribution partners and suppliers. And IT users were pretty much limited to finance and accounting.

No IT executive ever envisioned migrating corporate voice communications to the Internet. And some industry pundit actually said:  “No one will ever buy anything online.” (If you know the source of that comment, please let me know).

Security? That was an occasional password. (Minicomputers from a company called Basic Four, for example, didn’t even require a user logon).

2007 marks the 27^th anniversary the first time the phrase “Chief Information Officer” was uttered.

While the CIO's job description, at its highest level is easy to say, it is one of the most complex in business mostly because today’s CIO is under demands to be both business executive and technology manager. In fact, according to CIO Insight, 55 percent say contributing to corporate strategy is one of their three top responsibilities.

What else do we know about CIOs?

• 28% say they’ve spent half their careers in IT and half outside of IT.

• 34% manage another corporate function while running IT (CIO Doreen Wright at Campbell's Soup ran HR for a while).

• 16% spend most of their time fighting fires.

• 55% report to the chairman, CEO or president of their enterprise.

(Source: CIO Insight, April 5, 2005)

CIOs are all about business process
Back in the 80s, and as recent as the last decade, CIO’s pretty much let the functionality of off-the-shelf software dictate how people worked. While still true today, it’s another dynamic that is changing. Two independent surveys done this year (Gartner’s 2005 CIO Agenda and Deloitte’s CIO 2.0) confirm this. Business process improvement, integration and security have become another front-and-center priority for the modern CIO.

One final characteristic of today’s CIO: More than half of them are involved in decisions about mergers and acquisitions.

If you sell to the CIO, how have you seen the role change over the years?