What is a CIO? | Tech Talk - YouTube

Hi, there. Thanks again for joining us on another Tech Talk.

I'm Nick, and I'm joined again by Chad Hiatt.

He's our chief information officer here at Aldridge.

Today we're going to be talking about our CIOs that we provide to our clients.

Chad, go ahead and describe for us what a CIO is.

A chief information officer within an organization

within Aldridge or even in overall delivery

is really tasked with strategically aligning IT

to what the business's objectives are.

The CIO is normally part of the executive leadership team of the organization.

Whereas the CEO, is going to define the vision

and the mandate and the direction of the organization.

The CEO will say, "We're going to accomplish this in the next year

or the next two years or the next three years.

Here are our goals. Here's what we're trying to do."

The CIO then internalizes that and says, "Okay. Within my teams,

within technology, and what technology does within the organization,

here's how we are going to either accomplish

or support the other teams and those initiatives.

Here's what we're bringing to the table to make that happen

and make sure that as an organization we achieve that."

What are some of the key benefits that our CIO is bringing to our clients?

Most of our clients in the small- to medium-sized business level

while they can certainly benefit from the strategy that a CIO brings

and the IT Knowledge that a CIO brings

often it's not economically appropriate for clients

of that scale to have a full-time CIO role.

It makes sense for them to be able

to leverage the expertise of what Aldridge brings to them

much like they leverage our expertise

for our services desk and network operations and implementation teams.

The CIO role is actually part of our overall service delivery to our clients

so that the CIO can participate in the leadership meetings

and strategize with the client and say,

"Well, let's really talk about what we're trying to do

over the next 12 months or 24 months or 36 months

so that we understand what we're trying to build the solution to support."

It's not just a matter of going in and saying this is the right product

and here's the thing that's new and this is exciting.

It's like, no, house is really going

to generate more revenue or reduce costs in the client environment

to help them achieve what they're really trying to do as an organization.

In fact, the best relationships that we've got with some of our clients

that are at a very high level of maturity

we are always planning ahead.

Usually, those conversations are occurring 12 to 18 months down the road.

We know what's going to be happening.

That information, that part of that strategy

part of what we're doing from an IT architectural perspective

gets fed back into our service teams, into our network operations teams,

so that they understand what our client organizations are trying to accomplish.

Everything that we're doing as an organization for IT is in context

and that's usually led by the CIO.

Where does the CIO fit in the framework that we have for successful IT?

The CIO sits at the strategy level the framework.

They often also participate in the architectural or the management components of it.

When you're designing IT

there's a very large part of the design

that has to be driven by the strategy of the organization.

They're really participating in those top levels.

There are also times where the CIO will come

into the conversation even from a support or a management perspective.

If someone has an issue within the client organization

and someone within the IT group is saying, "Wait, I can solve that."

Oftentimes, they'll know the right direction to go

but the loop that passed the CIO to say,

"Is this consistent with what we're trying to do for an overall strategy?

I don't want to go in a direction that's not consistent

with what the leadership is trying to achieve."

What makes a good CIO? What sort of skills do they bring to the table?

-Speaking for Aldridge

the CIOs have technical backgrounds

but also management executive backgrounds.

A typical CIO; we're talking in an IT Industry overall

has usually gone through a support role.

They've usually gone into a manager role

managing other people providing support.

Sometimes they've progressed up to a director role

but usually, they have that executive level experience.

These are people that are comfortable participating

at the table with a CEO or president, or a business owner,

the principals of the organization, and having high-level conversations

at that tier without getting stuck down in the weeds

of the individual technical implementations.

They then take that information, synthesize it

and turn it into the actual strategies, designs and architectures

that make the organization move forward.

What would be some differences

between our CIO offering versus maybe other CIOs

or internal CIOs at large companies?

Internal CIOs at large companies are great

for the companies that have that economic scale and that makes sense.

For companies that are smaller

where maybe they don't have that role dedicated inside

but they feel like they're getting that or some similar name service

from another provider, at least what I've seen in conversations

is that it's rare to see the level of engagement

that we really bring to the table with that

to really understand what we're trying to accomplish.

It's not about products. It's not about technology solutions.

If the conversation shifts to products or technology solutions

it's the wrong conversation.

It's not a CIO conversation at that point.

It's really about what is the business trying to achieve?

What is the business trying to accomplish?

What are the things that the business is trying to overcome?

Then applying our expertise and our knowledge

at that executive level to be able to say, "I think we can solve that

if we did this, this and this. Let's consider this."

Nick: Thanks for joining us again for another Tech Talk.

This has been a great discussion.

Hopefully, you've learned a little bit about the CIO offering that Aldridge has.

If you want more information, feel free to reach out to us at www.aldridge.com.

We'll see you on the next Tech Talk.