CIOs see strategic role as businesses are transformed

IT getting integrated into management: Industry speakers

From large businesses trying to make more informed decisions, using enterprisewide data, to smaller firms, learning to quickly identify niches and capitalising on them, information technology is becoming a strategic tool, industry speakers said at a conference here on Friday.

Re-architecting an enterprise's IT systems could even lead to new business opportunities, for that enterprise, senior executives of IT services firms said at the conference, organised by IDC India, a subsidiary of a US-based IT market research firm, International Data Corp.

As firms re-evaluate what they can outsource, giving over to others many tasks traditionally done in-house, the role of the chief information officer (CIO) is also changing, and becoming more important.

From helping a company plan and manage its IT infrastructure, CIOs are being called on to contribute to business strategy, Krishnakumar Natarajan, president and CEO, IT services, MindTree Consulting here, said.

Now, more than ever, CIOs need to keep track of "which platforms (technology) to bet on, where vendors are developing standards and co-operating and where they are competing, and what all this is throwing up by way of important applications," Natarajan said. In the process, users of IT are finding IT-enabled business opportunities, he said.

"Hewitt, for instance, a large human resources and staffing specialist," Natarajan said, "overhauled its IT architecture, and discovered it could offer HR business process outsourcing to other firms. United Parcel Service (UPS), in the US, is taking over the supply chain management of several clients," he said.

UPS knew it like few others, and the clients could concentrate on their core businesses, such as making auto parts for instance. The vendors too, such as IBM, Accenture and HP, are all repositioning themselves to address changing customer needs, he said.

Mythili Ramesh, a vice-president at Wipro Infotech, said, on the vendors side, companies are now expected to have "end-to-end solutions" capabilities, though they may not get contracts to deliver such solutions.

They are being called on to consult on deploying IT systems, at various levels "" provide "IT strategy consulting".

"More multinational firms, than before," Ramesh said, "are interested in vendors who can do everything from identifying a site for their IT centres to building and running it, for longer periods. Seven and 10-year contracts are increasing", she said.