WHY SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES (SMBs) SHOULD CONSIDER SHARED CIO SERVICES TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY

The position of Chief Information Officer (CIO) has been created by large companies in the last 20 years or so, the primary role being to define, develop, implement and manage a forward looking strategic technology plan. The CIO’s role is not to deliver technology services directly, but to understand the business needs and to find suitable solutions that align with the strategic business goals.

The objective of a “Shared CIO”-as-a-service is to make the role affordable for SMBs. Many small organizations either spend significant time and money in hiring a full time CIO or end up compromising on IT alignment to their business by not hiring a CIO at all. Indeed it becomes quite difficult to hire a CIO due to many different reasons, such as:

– Experienced CIOs being un-willing to join startups or SMBs
– High cost of hiring a professional CIO
– SMBs may not have enough or challenging work content for the CIO, and this may cause the CIO to leave the organization

So SMB organizations usually compromise and try manage with what they have, and sometimes it leads to higher costs owing to duplication of efforts across the functions or incremental spends due to an unplanned, phased strategy without the end goal in mind.

Most successful businesses would vouch for technology as their key success factor and the owners of these businesses would definitely agree that they leave technology to the experts.

With the idea of making CIO services available at affordable levels to SMBs, we provide shared and virtual CIO services for organizations. Here are some of the services you can expect from a shared CIO.

What services can you expect from a Shared or Virtual CIO?

Planning – Thinking about future requirements so that IT can meet the needs of the business

Governance & Compliance – Ensuring that IT and the business align to communicate and make good decisions, work towards the same goals

Risk – Identifying, tracking and managing anything that can have impact on IT operations

Service Delivery – Making sure business gets the best possible customer service from your IT department

Knowledge & Information – Capturing and structuring corporate and IT knowledge and information for efficiency

Architecture – Consult on Hardware, software and outsourced IT Services

To know more about our Shared CIO services, do write to us at dm@precisionit.co.in or call us @ +91 9176632573