Greasing IT's Internal PR Machine With Hard Metrics

The best CIOs ditch the spreadsheets and PowerPoint when they set out to change cultures or communicate major change. In cases like these, inspiration and convinction work best.

But when it comes to communicating IT's bottom-line business contribution, hard metrics are effective and necessary. Smart CIOs however, realize it's more than just ROI. Here's how two sharp IT departments are illuminating the value of technology:

At American Power Conversion, IT has installed an alert system, that notes each and every instance where a commitment to a customer is missed (for example, a shipment that doesn't arrive one time). IT executives have proven why taking action on such news can do more to improve customer satisfacation and retention than just about anything else. And they have the metrics to back it up. The system also supports the firm's larger brand promise of delivering uninterrupitble power.

The company's CRM director, Mark Nadeau, calls it "uninterruptible customer satisfaction."   

CIO Paul Heller (at Vanguard) is another outward-facing type of IT executive. He understands how easy it is to take on the internal stuff, so he forces IT staffers to take on projects that directly impact external business outcomes that are quantified and tracked. Heller has created a dashboard that alerts him when an IT project's costs are falling out of line with their promised business results, as measured by their impact on the firm's external clients.

An early warning system helps get projects that are failing to meet business requirements back on track before it's too late.

Like many IT departments, these two companies staff communications expertise along side their technologists, realizing the importance of internal public relations when it comes to communicating IT's value to executives and boards of directors.

For other tips on how IT exeutives use metrics to track and communicate IT's business value, check out Information Week's October 23, 2006 issue, Why Let The Bean Counters Have All the Fun.