CIO Corner

Aligning IT with Business

Today’s CIO is expected to understand the company’s strategic focus, core business lines and provide services to end users that enhance the company’s growth and profitability. In order to fulfill these requirements a CIO must understand the various business lines being supported, align IT processes to support the business needs, synchronize the IT systems to measure the impact, and provide data to substantiate the value. Typically IT organizations have not staffed resources with experience to collect, articulate, and deliver the information required to meet this need.

The savvy CIO is looking for partnerships that can help bridge the gap of understanding between core business goals and IT infrastructure issues while still providing solutions to address end users expectations. In many cases the CIO is finding the vendor community to be equally challenged with articulating the value and impact their service and/or product offers the IT department for the business lines.

AlignSync builds its business on understanding the needs of today’s CIO by providing a roadmap to help the CIO bridge the gap of understanding while effectively minimizing and managing disruptions to business operations caused by IT infrastructure problems. Through the AlignSync consulting service, the CIO can now solve business and technical problems with a single solution. AlignSync offers clients a professional consulting offering that will provide the client with a high impact solution that addresses and maps the impact to the overall business – not just the daily IT challenges.

AlignSync staffs Engagement Managers who have experience at both the Business and Technical level to evaluate the environment. Also, with our team of highly skilled Enterprise Management Architects, we offer our customers expertise to evaluate the existing technical environment, comprehend the technical needs to improve service, design an architectural and technical plan to meet your objectives, and we offer technical teams to deliver the design.

The strongest service offered for a CIO is the Decision/Reporting Management solution. Consolidated dashboards have become an IT necessity and are readily available. However, once the reports are collected, there remains the task of evaluating the various reports, evaluating the impact across the organization, looking at short term and long term changes and investment decisions that can continuously offer planning and improvements. AlignSync's Engagement Management Team can work with you and your team to:

• Evaluate present reporting systems across all platforms in the IT Infrastructure
• Comprehend the gaps in reporting needed to make effective decisions
• Financial and performance impact metrics
• Provide a Monthly Scorecard for the CIO showing performance measurements and improvements
• Provide a Quarterly Executive Report designed for an CIO and CFO level presentation that includes:
  • Executive Level comparative performance information
  • Top 5 Issues and the resolutions
  • Top 5 Watch List (future investments)
  • Steps take to improve the operational environment during the quarter

CIO - Controlled Cost vs Controlled Results (when Outsourcing)

With the financial challenges CIOs are facing today, it is yet another opportunity to evaluate whether Outsourcing the Infrastructure is a strategically and financial good decision. But an element holding a CIO back is the burning question of, "If I outsource the IT Infrastructure to reduce cost, how can I remain in control of the entire IT operation and control the potential risk when someone other organization is controlling a portion that affects the end result?" Good question.

By using a combination of technologies available on the market today, CIO's can have it both ways. The first step is to have a Common Operating Picture of the entire IT environment (including all Management Systems, Floor Plans, Wiring, Manuals, Applications, Databases, etc. and how each component impacts the rest during an outage, more effective decisions can be made. And with the capability to run "What If" scenarios, planning and testing potential outage scenarios allows stronger business continuity plans to be built to anticipate problem resolutions.

While a critical first step is to know the complete environment, it is only information until it can be acted upon. By "Actioning" the plan when changes in the environment cause disruptions, it makes the power of knowledge work in your favor. It can also provide a notification capability to notify the affected team even when the outage is being managed by an outside service. This keeps the CIO from being caught unaware of a potentially critical situation, allows for cohesive communication, and can even prevent SLA breaches when tied with the Outsourced service.

Call or email AlignSync today to request more information on how to "Control Costs AND Control Results" (when Outsourcing).

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