CIOs discuss overlap with COO role
Are turf wars about to break out between CIOs and COOs?
CIOs have been weighing in on the idea that there is an increasing overlap between technology leadership and COOs, with most businesses relying ever more on technology.
John Linwood, former CIO at Wood Mackenzie and former CTO of the BBC explained that those in senior positions within enterprises need to be more tech savvy.
"Almost every organisation, regardless of sector or focus, depends on an increasing level of technology to be successful," Linwood told Computing.
"Many CEOs that I have talked to recently are saying that their business needs to become a 'technology business'. At the same time the complexity and level of integration of the technology for all functions in the business means that managers and execs are having to become tech savvy and this can be challenging.
"As a result, CEOs are looking to their CIOs to broaden their remit to take on or partner in the day to day running of non-IT functions," he said.
Tom Clark, CIO of Leeds Building Society shared his own experience of becoming increasingly responsible for operational tasks.
"I have responsibility for a number of operational areas including running the property portfolio of head office and branch buildings as well as business resilience," said Clark.
"The skills needed within IT transfer well, for example we are running a branch refurbishment programme - which we had to agree a design template, put together a plan, track risks and issues etc, and are running week long sprints where we redecorate and refurbish two branches a week.
"Day to day running of property also reuses ITIL skills, there's a support desk, tiered support, vendor management and SLAs - the thing being supported is different, but the means are the same.
"Business resilience is about making sure the business is able to continue day to day operations, regardless of incidents such as power failures or the loss of a facility. This uses techniques we use in IT to identify and remove single points of failure as well as major incident management processes," he explained.
Julian Bond, Head of ICT at Hillarys said that these new responsibilities broaden CIOs' experience.
"I certainly think it makes some sense when operational areas are undergoing technology-led business change," said Bond, adding that he dislikes the word 'disruption' here "as IT can bring both good and bad disruption to operational areas!".
He continued: "As well as aligning priorities and objectives in these periods, it also usefully broadens the perspective and experience of IT leaders. Customer Engagement and E-Commerce are obvious contenders."