The 10 main measures of a CIO

Having an overview of the business is essential for suggesting improvements in the IT department.

In a world that experiences continuous changes such as the digital revolution, the role of technology and above all of measurements also changes all the time. It is not just a trend, but about analyzing, planning and rethinking strategies and how they can always add value to the results of the IT area and the organization as a whole. It is the CIO’s job to accompany and monitor these changes.

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Below are some examples of monitoring that a CIO can currently perform:

1- Commercial value of the company

The measures of the IT area must always be calculated thinking about its contribution to the business. And this is not an easy task. A set of operational values ​​with indicators such as: response time, delivery, department performance based on studies in the service desk, quality time, application development, infrastructure and process maintenance do not always meet the expectations of managers of other areas. One of the recommendations is to measure business value in key performance areas, such as revenue growth, cost reduction or even elimination. The suggestion is the creation of a common nomenclature, adapting these three aspects, with the aim of guiding priority investments, improving controls for delivery and decision-making.

2- Speed: from idea to offer

As business models change at an ever-increasing rate, it is important for the CIO to start measuring the total time it takes for an idea to go from conceptual state to realization in the production system. A good way, for example, is to quantify the number of entries for a certain period.

3- Establish relationships between technology costs and the quality of the cycle from idea to offer

In addition to quantifying the velocity of inputs, CIOs must measure the quality of these projects, with indicators such as cost and number of issues per hour dedicated to each new project and team performance. In the latter case, the best performing teams can share their experience with other teams and equalize projects in the area.

4- User satisfaction

The correct measurement of technology user satisfaction is a very important indicator. Knowing how to go beyond studies and data collected in groups or departments can generate more precise information to understand how IT meets requests and their acceptance in certain areas. This way the measures can also be used by other areas, such as leadership or government. Cross-referencing this information can generate data that translates into improvements, such as changes in cost per machine or even evaluating technology investment based on net income.

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5- Fragmentation of processes

The amount of data and information generated today grows exponentially for a CIO; Analyzing process information in a macro manner, supported by multiple systems, can make it difficult to provide real-time data analytics. One option could be for the CIO to monitor the number of solutions in each process in order to present results and information.

6- Financial maturity

Once again it must be reiterated that IT area measures must always be developed thinking about their contribution to the business as a whole. In this way, CIOs must align with business objectives and efficiently manage operational expenses and invested capital. A good way to evaluate the financial maturity of the IT area is to monitor productivity aspects, establishing relationships between the costs of the technology and its results within the company.

7- Security

Being an area of ​​great visibility and vulnerability, security is a very important indicator for companies. Most measures in this entry revolve around the average cost of responding to an incident or the number of attacks blocked by the firewall, but few reveal information about the effectiveness of security initiatives.

One trend pointed out by industry specialists is to use measures that offer useful information to plan and improve security initiatives, such as measuring how many business units regularly perform invasion tests or how long a network attack lasts.

8- Business impact generated by critical failures

As important as quantifying IT productivity time, the business value of IT assets, and equipment efficiency is knowing how much time is wasted due to failures that impact the organization’s routine. The recommendation for CIOs is to determine what qualifies as a critical failure and make an assessment, which could be expressed as a percentage of revenue or work not performed as estimated.

9- Response time to a problem and typology of the problem

Another measure that can be taken into consideration, as was quickly discussed in the previous points, is the average response time for identifying and solving a problem and a way to systematize it, into categories or typologies.

10- Alignment with the company as a whole

This last point reinforces each of the previous ones as it encourages alignment of the prioritization of IT indicators with the organization’s overall strategies. Thus, in addition to attention, external demands for the execution of projects and products are important. This is why it is essential that CIOs also accompany their teams in satisfying internal requests.

It is important to keep in mind that all these measures must contribute to the advancement of processes, always establishing a relationship with the value of the business to justify investments in IT. The challenges of the measure are precisely those of establishing the identification of indicators that demonstrate the strategic importance of the area within the company structure.

Sources:

http://blog.cionet.com/2015/11/10/top-10-metrics-para-um-novo-cio/

http://cio.com.br/tecnologia/2015/08/26/quatro-metrics-de-seguranca-que-importam/

http://itforum365.com.br/noticias/detalhe/4980/cio-qual-melhor-forma-de-medir-desempenho-da-ti