Be the #1 Super Conductor
of Your Company Orchestra
Your business is an Orchestra for which you are the #1 super conductor. You can’t possibly do everything by yourself in your business, so hire professionals to be your orchestra members. Every member plays their instruments gleefully, culminating in one beautiful symphony.
The same is also true for your IT team. You hire a Chief Information Officer (CIO) to conduct the orchestra of your technology department. One person cannot do all the IT support, development, infrastructure security, cyber awareness training, and more. So how do you get it all to play the symphony effectively let? You hire a CIO or a Fractional CIO.
According to payscale.com, a full-time CIO in the Orlando area starts around $180K a year and can go as high as $250K plus benefits. If you cannot afford a full-time CIO, maybe a fractional or part-time CIO is for you. With a fractional CIO, you pay an hourly or a monthly flat fee, and they function as full-time CIOs with part-time hours.
So, what does a Super Conductor do as a Fractional CIO?
A fractional CIO is a senior leader who provides ongoing strategic guidance, offers thought leadership, leads technology development and optimization and provides tailored services aligned to your business’s needs.
The Fractional CIO helps optimize your budget while meeting objectives and helping your company realize its key performance indicators.
In addition, this leader offers a unique outside perspective, offering best practices in all aspects of technology, including emerging technology, regulations, and security threats. A fractional CIO can often bring a broader perspective and experience levels, complementing a company’s internal capabilities.
As a Super Conductor Fractional CIO, some of the attributes are:
- Acts Independently – On your side and in it for the long term; vendor-agnostic; a trusted adviser
- They Are Strategic – Work strategically but deliver realistically
- They Have Real-World Experience – Experienced technology executive leaders, multi-company/industry perspective
- Business-focused – Understanding which business drivers feed technology
- C-Suite Liaison – Make your technology vendors/suppliers/outsourcing and staff work together
- Value – Improve agility; fractional and flexibility expenditure
- Improved Return – Align technology spending based on business objectives, define and measure ROI
- Mitigate Risk – Momentary to long-term control
The #1 Super Conductor Fractional CIO Role and Responsibilities
Businesses need senior technology leaders who understand the business objectives and provide technical direction to support those objectives. So, it’s not enough to plan for innovation. Technology leaders must be both visionary and sensible. As insightful executives, we prompt a comprehensive technology agenda to help your business grow from emerging technologies. At the same time, we deal with the realities of the company. We streamline the productivity of your company’s current state of technology solutions. We reduce costs and maximize results to increase your technology ROI.
The following are typical responsibilities for the #1 Super Conductor Fractional CIOs.
- IT and business strategies alignment
- IT leadership and management
- Key performance metrics definition
- Performance status reports
- ROI evaluation and budgeting
- Resource management
- Service provider partnerships management
- IT and business risk management
- Business processes design and optimization
- IT technology standards definition
- IT Governance
- IT security and compliance management
- Contract review and negotiate
- Board advisor
Do not be confused!
A CIO is a C-Suite executive and is not your IT Support person. Many outsourced managed services providers will try and upsell their services to do support in today’s world. Still, these companies have the same entry-level support members trying to do the CIO function in most cases.
Think of your CIO as the #1 Super Conductor!
When people think of IT, they think of one person doing all things, which is impossible, and like a doctor, you wouldn’t go to a foot specialist if you have heart issues. The same is valid with IT.
You will have your desktop support, server support, network support, and security teams in an organization. If your company does application development, you will have developers and help desk developers, which will all be separate. Still, you need that top executive to know how to manage them.
At JAYCO CIO Services, our CIOs have been CIOs in the real world and know how to manage multiple internal and external teams. If you are bewildered or swamped by the quick pace of technological changes, we can help you simplify your strategy.
We are offering a CIO Assessment for companies unsure where they stand. Our assessment is a two-day consultation to help you understand what areas where your organization excels and where you might be deficient. Contact us today so we can help you get started.