Having strategic technology leaders on your team is imperative. They play a pivotal role in ensuring the right technologies are not only in place but also effectively leveraged to meet and exceed your goals.
Aligns goals and operations
A CIO aligns your IT’s enterprise elements with your business objectives. They create a unified technology approach to meet each department’s individual needs and the organization’s collective needs. This includes selecting the right technology stack, application software, and tools to build an integrated solution for your members. This enables staff and volunteers to interact seamlessly to meet your mission objectives.
Provides a reality check
As a “C” level executive, the CIO interacts with the Association leadership team (internal and Member Board) to provide an IT perspective in both organizational goal setting and in the decision-making process. In each conversation, the CIO provides a reality check:—can the IT infrastructure support the business objective? With an understanding of the IT system’s existing capabilities and the cost of meeting new initiatives, the CIO can create an organizational roadmap with a realistic view of what fits in the budget.
Sets and Orders Priorities
The CIO establishes IT priorities within the IT department. The goal: business continuity through system security. Therefore, the CIO must prioritize the protection of the data and IT system’s integrity with the help of Network Managers and often, third party Managed Service Providers (MSP), before other needs can be addressed.
Once these objectives are achieved, the CIO can address other organizational IT needs. For each initiative, the CIO can provide a logical order that aligns IT system capabilities, the IT roadmap, and the budget. In this way, priorities can be established based on these dependencies, and milestone dates can be set.
Finds Solutions Across Functions
The CIO has the perfect perspective to recommend process improvements. These recommendations may be in any part of the organization and often cross departments. Integrated IT applications and shared data are key factors to enable these types of improvements. The CIO can recognize these opportunities and provide the IT infrastructure to make these types of projects a success.
The CIO is also a communicator. They can explain technology trends and opportunities to management and staff in nontechnical language. Often, the organization needs to understand why innovative technology is being embraced or ignored and how it may be applied.
Additionally, the CIO can be the liaison between departments and a solution facilitator. As an overarching part of the organization, they can bring different departments into projects to resolve complex integrated issues. This communication often leads to the IT team being invited into departmental planning and initial project conversations, instead of being included as an afterthought. This is an important shift in organizational culture.
The Fractional CIO
Many Associations’ budgets can’t support the current average base CIO salary , much less the total compensation for experienced CIOs, which can be nearly 2X that. A Fractional CIO is a great solution. With this option, services are provided, as needed, for an hourly rate. In the Association market, the prices range from $200 to $250 per hour. This can allow the benefits of CIO to fit within an Association’s budget.
For small to mid-sized associations, this option is especially effective. Major strategy and roadmap tasks occur infrequently and oftentimes with the annual budget process or Board initiatives. Hours can be allocated across the year to provide continuity and organization-wide awareness for the Fractional CIO. Then, when needed, hours can be concentrated on specific key tasks.
Strategic leadership pays dividends
Technology is evolving at an incredible pace, presenting both opportunities and risks. The CIO role is critical to an Association’s success. Their perspective is essential in organizational strategy and roadmap conversations. And they provide equally valuable insight into security and other risks. Given their vantage point across the organization, they can recommend process improvements, new products, and services to members.
A Fractional CIO can provide valuable insight within budget constraints. Key projects and tasks can be identified where CIO skills are needed. This focused approach ensures essential input when critical decisions are required.
Technology is a substantial investment of financial and human resources for organizations. Make sure your technology works for you with a well-defined leadership to help map your IT needs to your organization’s objectives.