Author Archives: mark

Flexible working: Five top tips for bringing it home

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For the IT department, successful flexible working is not just about getting the tech right. Toby Clarke, who has over a decade of developing flexible-working policies, offered me five key pieces of advice for other CIOs in an article for TechRepublic:

The 2012 Olympics have not just been about sporting excellence. They have also provided a useful test case for CIOs looking to establish an effective flexible-working strategy.

Businesses across the UK capital were warned of severe travel congestion in the run-up to the event. Many London-based companies saw the Games as an opportunity to create a flexible-working strategy, and to implement the technologies and policies that allow employees to complete tasks at home.

Some CIOs already have a long-standing interest in new employment practices. Toby Clarke, IT director at insurance specialist Abbey Protection Group, is a passionate advocate of flexible working. In line with legislative demands, the firm has spent the past decade honing its strategy.

“Flexible working is not simply about getting the technology right,” says Clarke, who draws attention to a series of performance, support and leadership concerns. Here, Clarke provides his top five tips for CIOs looking to establish increased flexibility.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

IT skills crisis? How coding and cool can crack it

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The IT skills crisis is less to do with the quantity of candidates and more to do with the quality of their skills. That was the conclusion of a recent TechRepublic CIO Jury analysis, which highlighted how IT leaders are concerned about the lack of young candidates with an aptitude for technology. So, how do you solve a problem like the IT skills crisis? Three experts offered their solutions to me for a TechRepublic feature:

Paul Coby, IT director at retail giant John Lewis, admits he is concerned by the IT skills gap. He is chair of the CIO board of advisory body e-skills UK and wonders whether the upcoming cadre of IT graduates will satisfy economic demand.

The UK has a proud technological heritage, from the pioneering intelligence work carried out at Bletchley Park, to the first business computer in Lyons Electronic Office and on to Sir Tim Berners Lee’s ground-breaking work on the World Wide Web. “IT is a UK success story but we really need to generate excitement about the future of technology,” says Coby.

That failing, recognises Coby, is a significant part of the problem. While the younger generation is eager to get their hands on smartphones and social-networking apps, they are not necessarily as interested in the software that underlies such technologies.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Curtains for CIOs? Five tips to put them back in the spotlight

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Some say the rise of the cloud and BYOD will spell the downfall of the CIO. But could these developments in fact strengthen the CIO’s hand? My latest feature for Tech Republic investigates:

Technology is increasingly being purchased and consumed by the business rather than by the IT department. It’s a trend that has led a number of experts to believe that the CIO will struggle to survive. They see the only answer for IT leaders is to take an operational view and to become more involved in line-of-business activities.

But isn’t it inherently naive to suggest that the CIO role is on the way out? Who will manage remaining enterprise IT assets and who will provide a strategic take on the technology and applications of the digital era? We ask five IT experts for their views on the future role of the CIO.

With more than a decade of IT and finance leadership experience at Carphone Warehouse, Matt Peers is now CIO of consultant Deloitte. And he is adamant that the suggestion that the CIO’s career could soon be over is flawed.

“Never has the role of CIO been more pervasive,” says Peers. “There’s nothing in business now that does not involve IT. But that central role is not about bits and bytes. People have talked for ages about being customer-friendly – and IT is now finally about enabling people to serve customers.”

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Top communication tips for winning over the business

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Does IT need an image make over? Here’s my latest feature for TechRepublic, which discusses the need for CIOs to develop a well-honed communications strategy.

IT tends to neglect its own PR – and often only steps up communications with the business when things have already gone wrong. That approach has to change, say a growing number of IT leaders.

Communicating the value of technology to rest of the business is tough. Other functions, such as accounts or facilities, exist in almost splendid isolation, but technology has become the underlying architecture of the modern organisation.

CIOs charged with running the IT architecture have to communicate value to an increasingly technically literate audience. They have to deal with high user expectations, pushed upwards as employees in the age of consumerisation often have better access to technology at home than in the workplace.

But help can come in the form of a carefully-honed communications strategy, and leading CIOs are already drawing on external expertise to prove the business benefits of IT. Here, three CIOs share their top tips for using communications to boost business perceptions of IT.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Does CIO mean career is over?

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Has the role of the CIO had its day? Or, is such a leadership vision needed now more than ever? In a recent column for IT Pro, I examined the future of the IT leadership role:

Regular proclamations throughout the media from so-called experts make the same assertion about IT leadership: CIO stands for ‘career is over’ and the technology chief is an endangered species that will soon be executively extinct.

Such a standpoint is, in short, ridiculous. The rise of the digital business means technology, and its management, has never been more important to a successful organisation. So, why is there a belief that the CIO role is on the way out?

One possible explanation is that, while technology underpins modern business, it has also become increasingly consumable. Long gone are the days when you looked forward to getting to the office so you could use a quick computer to surf the web.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Want to succeed in IT? Five tips from the top

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How to reach the very top of the IT profession may remain a closed book to most technologists, but leading CIO Paul Coby presented some simple advice to me for TechRepublic on the best way to get there:

So, you want to be a top CIO? Sounds like a reasonable career aim, but how do you climb the greasy pole and reach the highest echelons of IT leadership?

If you want best-practice career advice, it makes sense to listen to people who have already excelled – and are continuing to excel – in the technology chief position. Paul Coby is one such CIO, IT director at UK retail giant John Lewis and former technology chief at British Airways.

Coby spent a decade as group CIO of the airline, a role he prefaced with 17 years at the forefront of the UK public sector. As well as running IT for John Lewis, Coby holds a senior position at advisory body e-skills UK. Here, he draws on his experience and offers his five top tips to IT professionals looking to become a successful next-generation CIO.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Five reasons why cloud computing won’t face a backlash

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Business computing is slowly but surely moving on-demand, with analysts suggesting the cloud will be a standard way of sourcing technology over the next decade. So what will such a change mean for the IT organisation and the wider business? My feature for TechRepublic investigates:

Just as outsourcing experienced a backlash because of its effect on employees, will organisations and IT departments that externalise technology through the cloud also suffer a negative reaction? TechRepublic seeks the opinion of five IT experts.

Kurt Frary, ICT architecture manager at Norfolk County Council, is looking to develop partnerships with suppliers to improve services, and is considering the potential of approaches such as the cloud.

“At key decision points, you must consider all service options,” he says. ”There are some things we just can’t put into the cloud, like the social care system. You evaluate the decision point and work with that. Cloud is not always a risk to jobs, but it could be a risk in regards to a change in the type of jobs an organisation can offer,” says Frary.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

What will your next network look like?

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My latest feature for TechRepublic includes conversations with five IT experts who demonstrate how the next-generation network needs to be flexible, responsive and ready for changing business demands.

It’s one thing giving your employees access to information on the move, but it is quite another to create the type of network that can cope with the continuing demand for data and devices, both now and in the future. How can CIOs create an information network that can deal with the evolving requirements of internal and external customers?

Analyst Ovum estimates 70 percent of large companies have extensive networking requirements, with CIOs at such firms recognising that increased complexity in business applications is pushing the demand for a more sophisticated management approach.

“Apps are cascading through the organisation in every way, from workflow and testing through to e-commerce and billing,” says David Molony, principal analyst at Ovum. “CIOs now have to deal with the interconnectedness of machines. And it means IT leaders are looking for more flexibility and responsiveness in the networks that their businesses use.”

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Is the PSN really a shortcut to shared services?

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While the network of networks for public sector organisations is gathering pace, my latest piece for Guardian Government Computing examines the obstacles that could lie ahead for greater take up of shared services:

In austere times, the sharing of services – from back office processes to communications infrastructure and software – is viewed as a simple way to cut duplication and generate efficiencies.

But cost-cutting aside, the take up of shared services may get a further boost from the PSN (public services network). It is anticipated that as many as 80% of public sector employees, or four million individuals, will be using the PSN by the end of 2014, and the two key frameworks that govern the network of networks are expected imminently.

The government hopes the PSN will provide a significant support for the shared services approach, helping organisations to change the way they work together. If that vision is to become reality, there could be more than one bump in the road, according to chief information officers (CIOs). Linda Herbert, director of IT at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), recognises the timing of the PSN is expedient.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Running to stand still? Five tips to stop CIOs being left behind

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IT and business change cracks along at speed, so CIOs have to know the best ways of coping with those rapid shifts – as well as handling management expectations. Here’s my latest feature for Tech Republic, which explores the ability of the CIO to cope with transformation:

Modern business is all about speed – speed to innovation, to market and to growth. CIOs are expected to create the strategy that allows the business to move quickly, making best use of the digital technology than underpins organisational operations.

Working at such a pace can be challenging, especially as the rest of the business demands flexibility that might have been lacking in traditional enterprise-scale IT deployments.

So, how do CIOs cope with rapid change in IT and create the type of IT strategy that meets business expectations? Five experts offer five best-practice tips for dealing with the pace of change.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.