SME Philes: 6 questions CIOs should ask themselves

silicon.com is proud to introduce a new column by Jonathan Steel which will focus on the IT concerns for small to medium-sized businesses. Today's topic: why it's so vital for CIOs from smaller organisations to get their job right.

As the 'real-world' CIO Jury session at silicon.com's CIO Forum in September rattled along, I heard my old friend Rene Carayol talking about CIO being an acronym for 'Career Is Over'. And a few days later, a silicon.com leader talked about how 'CIOs, IT directors et al we heard from on the day need to get a little defensive in order to field some of the allegations being thrown around'.

Well, here's the thing. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. Or rather, I think the fuss is continually misplaced. As far as I can see, most companies in the UK simply decided at some point to Americanise their IT director's title, and we ended up with a bunch of CIOs. But the fact is, very few of them actually attempt the role their title describes.

As the title ought to imply, chief information officers should have responsibility for the design, structure, collation, management, presentation and dissemination of the most important things organisations possess - their information.

To achieve success in that role, he or she will have people working on the infrastructure that supports the information flows, and they will be IT people. The CIO may also have others (business analysts, cross-business relationship managers) reporting to them as necessary. In these competitive times, how could the role of CIOs be diminishing? Surely it should be getting more critical by the day.

The problem is that, with some notable exceptions, the CIO is expected to be, and tasked as, an IT director, or chief technology officer (CTO). There are many reasons why this happens. Many boards are unaware what value a true CIO could add to their company; many regard anything to do with IT systems as a 'technology thing'; plenty of senior business people (right up to CEO level) regard someone with that much influence as dangerous and competitive; many functional directors are too protective of their own power base to lose control of 'their' information; and some companies may even actively discourage that degree of transparency.

Many would-be CIOs (and many incumbents) don't see their role this way either, often because they come from a technical background and are too attracted (or distracted) by the infrastructure challenge to tackle the really hard bit of the job.

And let's be clear, a true CIO job is really hard. Very few companies are set up with clear information flows, clean business processes or rationalised data (how much data is duplicated, muddled or missing in your organisation?). To get such a job right often requires extensive business transformation. It requires that all core information be managed to an enterprise-wide plan. And that means difficult and sensitive management challenges, a talent for finding or creating consensus and demonstrating value. Leadership even.

Until businesses understand and accept this, benefits (cost savings, better control, more accurate and timely management information etc) accruing from going through such an exercise will not be realised. And CIOs will continue to get the blame for failed IT projects and be the subject of discussions about their imminent disappearance.

And is it any wonder that so many IT projects fail? Or that the vendor community is accused of failing to meet business requirements, when companies themselves fail so often to understand or plan for their actual requirements?

Many of you reading this will be thinking 'But I work for a smaller company. It doesn't apply to us, and we don't have the resources to do this sort of thing anyway.' Well, here's the bad news - not only does it also apply to you, but in many ways, it's more important that you get it right. And you probably don't have the resources you need even to keep up with today's demands, let alone tomorrow's.

The good news is your job is easier in one way - you have less of an organisation to try to change. But do you really need to do something about it? And where should you start?

Well, apart from reading this column over the coming months, here are some questions which could help you to frame your thinking:

• Is information important in your business? That may sound an obvious question, with an obvious answer, but it isn't; some businesses don't need responsive and accurate information systems, but most do.

• Do your senior managers understand how critical an issue information is to your organisation? Do they know how your business would suffer if key supporting systems, or core data, were not available for an hour, or a day, or perhaps even lost altogether?

• Assuming you have identified critical information (customer data, sales data, etc), do you know where it is? Who owns it? How is it stored, and in how many places, and how many times? And how much is on individual desktops or (worse) laptops?

• Do you know which of your business processes are critical? Are they integrated at least to the extent of sharing the same information sources? Do those processes touch external suppliers? How is information shared with them?

• How often do any of your people delay what they are doing to search for some information that they need? How many times do you notice errors (or are told about them by a customer)?

• And finally, how often do you wonder whether management reports are up-to-date and accurate?

I'm sure that you have clear and positive answers to all these simple questions. But if you know someone that doesn't, perhaps a real CIO is just what they need.

Jonathan Steel is the founder and CEO of The Bathwick Group Ltd, an innovative research and publishing company.