“My company faces technology issues all of the time, but my IT budget seems to run wild with consultants, capital expenses, and personnel training!” For most businesses leaders we’ve met with, this statement sums up their entire view of (and frustration with) IT. Even if they do not immediately see issues and have just a general feeling of malaise with their IT efforts, after we go over our five questions it begins to crystallize. I personally feel that this desperate statement is cried out not only due to a misunderstanding of the role of IT, but can also be due to either lack of or downright ineffective IT management in their organization.

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One of the sad realities that I witness almost every day is when genuinely good IT people are overlooked by inexperienced management or human resources teams. Or, these existing good people find themselves being shown the door due to their manager’s inability to work with technologically-minded people. This happens extensively in the realm of growth companies and even in some start-ups. The push to become big and behave as a bureaucracy sometimes becomes incorrectly perceived as tantamount to success.

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I have been spending a lot of time talking about “progressive business and technology solutions”, but what does this really mean? What is a Virtual CIO? How does it help the small- to medium-sized business?

In other words, how does a Virtual CIO increase your business’ competitiveness in today’s marketplace?

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When I meet with potential clients for the first time, the first thing I always do after going over pleasantries and introductions is to dive right into the heart of what we’ve identified as the “five questions”. It’s not a sales pitch at all. We don’t consider ourselves to be sales people and our clients never have to deal with sales people or account executives or whomever; rather they deal directly with their Virtual CIO. Nevertheless, what these five questions do is get people to think about their views of IT and give them an alternative way to approach technology in their environment.

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Isn’t IT just another cost center in my business?

Not necessarily.

I’m frequently asked this by business owners because it’s all too common a misconception. When one thinks about information technology, it’s easy to just see IT as an organizational black box where money goes in and problems seem to emerge. The unfortunate reality is that this is, in many cases, an accurate description of IT as it related to budgets. The fortunate truth is that with careful planning, your IT department can ultimately prove to be less of a cost center and more of an investment center.

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One of the things that I get asked frequently is how all of this stuff about Virtual CIOs, IT governance, and technology adds any kind of meaningful value to a company. This questions crops up more and more when I am consulting with start-up companies and almost always when with growth companies. These two types of companies have management and founders who, as any good entrepreneur would, are constantly thinking about “what’s next” for their business. Wryly, this is referred to as an “exit”, or “exit strategy.”

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The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is the person in an organization who is responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals. As information technology and systems have become more important, the CIO has come to be viewed in many organizations as a key contributor in formulating strategic goals. Typically, the CIO in a large enterprise delegates technical decisions to employees more familiar with details. Usually, a CIO proposes the information technology an enterprise will need to achieve its goals and then works within a budget to implement the plan. Typically, a CIO is involved with analyzing and reworking existing business processes, with identifying and developing the capability to use new tools, with reshaping the enterprise’s physical infrastructure and network access, and with identifying and exploiting the enterprise’s knowledge resources.

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