CIO Talk Network Podcast

In today's competitive world, the agility of a business depends on the agility of it's IT. Enterprises need to be fast and nimble to deliver on any task/project using managed, outsourced, private cloud or public cloud. Are enterprises prepared for this kind of agility? What changes to enterprise DNA are required in to adopt and flourish using this hybrid delivery model? Guest 1: Russ Daniels, VP a...

Disruptive innovation is new tech that burns through the market place, displacing traditional technologies. It can be hard to recognize at first. Planned innovations are market oriented and entrepreneurial. They require vision, discipline, and team building. Sustained innovation relies on the day-by-day, incremental innovations by employees in a system that tolerates risks, rewards creativity, and...

There are five factors that affect brand positioning: 1) attributes, 2) buyer expectations, 3) competitor attributes, and 4) price, for 5) perceived quality. Today, IT critically impacts many operations and functions across business, so shouldn't it be able to help on these factors and improve brand positioning? How can IT help grow the brand? Guest 1: Jeff Peterson, Vice President and Chief Infor...

Organizations are under unrelenting pressure to grow, drive efficiency, and mitigate risks. Worsening the situation, the continual onslaught of changes in workplace trends and technologies has resulted in a complex and costly, high maintenance workplace. As an answer, "Desktop as a Service" has emerged as part of an overall IT industrialization trend. DaaS promises cost savings, enables a high deg...

For better or for worse, the future of IT will be shaped by today's policies, politics, and available resources.  Policies that could hamper innovation and advancement need to be influenced and mitigated where feasible. Stakeholder politics will always be part of the corporate landscape. Short resources are a chronic issue. If IT is to move forward to create a better future, where do we begin the...

A leader is able to lead because he is trusted by his team. They know him and what to expect. On the other hand, the business environment can change rapidly and unexpectedly, and a CIO must be ready to respond accordingly. Unfortunately that generally means bringing change into the organization, and change brings with it, uncertainty. Oops! There goes the hard won trust of the IT team, which can a...

An aggressive, assertive, and high-visibility CIO tends to redirect recognition from those who execute the details and stifle team spirit, resulting in frustration and dissatisfaction. On the other hand, a CIO who appears reticent and takes time to delegate responsibility and build and nurture future leadership talent may be perceived as being inattentive to business and lacking leadership him/her...

Supply chain management has never been a piece of cake. There are challenges related to cost fluctuations, supply disruptions, transportation capacity misjudgments, constraints, and many other challenges. Are you fully utilizing your ability to interconnect, automate, and introducing intelligence to the way your supply chain predicts disruptions, and smartly change course to keep business humming?...

Energy Informatics is about using IS to collect information on energy usage, so that it can be optimized to save energy and money! For example, IS collects information from sensors to tell if a room is being used, and turn off energy when it isn't, or collects information to identify more efficient driving routes to save on gas. While many US CIOs support Green IT, they've lagged on adopting Infor...

Once forbidden under rubrics such as Rogue or Shadow IT, consumer technology is invading workplaces everywhere! The officially sanctioned (and controlled) productivity tools of corporate IT are finding it hard to compete with the multiplicity of cool new consumer gadgets promising sky-is-the-limit productivity. The CIO must now weigh the headaches of increased security vulnerability, privacy issue...

IT is chronically long or short on resources. Resources need to be subtracted or added based on attrition, changes in tech trends, and the need to scale operations or respond on demand.  Meanwhile HR sits between a rock and a hard place, mandated to find the resources IT needs within budget constraints, while handicapped by a limited understanding of technologies and jargon, and courted by a multi...

The Chief Strategy Officer defines, refines, and brings clarity to the strategic issues an organization faces, so that all resources can be aligned into one cohesive force focused on a single mission, ready to move the company forward. Is the role of CIO Guest: Alex Pettit, Chief Information Officer and Secretary, State Information Technology and Telecommunications Guest Bio: https://www.ciotalkne...

Each day that passes, we see a more volatile, uncertain, and complex business world, evolving. While we struggle mightily to sustain our current existence, and perhaps eke out some incremental growth as we travel along, what is our plan to handle the road farther ahead? How are CEOs, CIOs, and other members of business leadership planning to handle a future of possibilities and challenges? Guest:...

We expect any career path to show increasing responsibility and acknowledgment by peers, but in a chaotic and uncertain business environment, careers can go wrong for any number of reasons. If adversity is a test of character, what about the trauma of losing one's title as CIO? When an IT leader falls from grace, how does he or she re-establish a career and regain lost ground? Guest: Chris Patrick...

Right sizing IT staffing starts with a strategy roadmap for achieving business goals. Both IT and HR must identify and agree on the GAP between on-hand resources versus anticipated needs. Essentially there needs to be a plan and a process to maintain ideal staffing levels for business continuity, but how do you keep this on-going? Is that even possible? Guest 1: Brenda Decker, Chief Information Of...

It's been suggested that the role of the CIO is ready for a shift from "managing" information to optimizing the processes that uses the information. This defines a real a paradigm shift, one that drives change throughout the organization and could potential reduce costs company-wide, not just in IT. But how does a CIO make this shift and what changes and accommodations are required to make this ch...

For the CIO to deliver real business growth, handle sensitive business/IT partnerships, and make complex technology decisions, he or she needs to be backed by a high performance IT team. What do you need and how do you go about building, training, and motivating a high performance IT team? Guest 1: John Baldoni, Chair of leadership development N2growth, a global leadership advisory firm & Author o...

There is a huge positive impact to the business if a new capability or product is introduced sooner rather than later. Referred to as "time to value," how can IT make a measurable contribution to reducing the length of this time? Guest 1: Jagdish Belwal, CIO, Tata Motors Guest Bio: https://www.ciotalknetwork.com/contributor/jagdish-belwal/ Guest 2: Dale Langley, Chief Information Officer, US Xpres...

The optimal IT program/project portfolio is one that delivers the most value at the least cost that can be successfully exploited as long there is enough agility and flexibility to capitalize on the opportunities in a timely manner that avoids market volatility. Is this an achievable goal? If not...how close can we get to it? Guest 1: Zahid Afzal, EVP and Chief Information Officer, Huntington Bank...

The increasing technical complexity of support today demands teamwork spanning not only the whole corporation but outside as well. To reach the highest service/support goals it may be necessary to reach out to external partners, developers, and even other customers. How can IT pull all these people from so many different business constituencies together into a virtual "village" to really resolve c...

BPI initiatives can significantly benefit organizations, by improving customer acquisition and retention, by improved worker productivity, by cost optimization, and improved risk management. So, should improving business processes be among the most important priorities for IT leaders? Are they interested and/or empowered enough to drive/lead such initiatives or are they better off working as enabl...

Many CIO's are passionate, talented, and motivated but feel limited in effectiveness, by organizational politics, policy and culture. What if they were given full, unrestricted freedom to think, act, and perform as they thought fit? That is, to act as if they were an unbiased outsider with full authority and a mandate to make the necessary changes they see, as needed? How could we enable this kind...

Collective Intelligence is a mix of cloud computing and crowd computing where both infrastructures are working optimally. However, cloud computing has issues related to security and privacy, while crowd computing solutions still need improvement in the way they moderate opinion, resolve conflict, and check facts. If we could just get past these issues, we could create a powerful collective intelli...

Selling is tough and keeping buyers/students/patients happy is even tougher. Today's consumers are demanding. They want support anytime, anywhere, including diagnostics and fast problem resolution. In the age of 24/7 customer tweeting what does it take to keep buyers happy? How do we measure the ROI of our investments in support people, processes, and technologies? What can we do to continually en...

We value Cloud computing because it offers significant scalability and cost savings, but is that motivation enough for Healthcare to move to cloud? If money were not a constraint, what would be the best roadmap? What are some of the obvious and hidden challenges that we need to overcome? What has been tried and worked (or failed) so far? Guest 1: Fernando Martinez, Vice President and Chief Informa...