Now that every company is a technology company, the IT organization plays a vastly different role. IT enables competitive advantage for the business. But IT requires an important person to live up to this new mandate: A revenue-generating CIO.
How do IT leaders deliver success making money for the business? That’s what Harvard Business Review Analytic Services sought to find out when it interviewed 15 leading CIOs for its recent research, “Revenue-Generating CIOs: Smart Strategies to Grow the Business.”
In addition to uncovering the four common practices these revenue generators shared, the report offers firsthand advice for IT leaders based on what they're doing in their own organizations.
Explore these seven quotes from the report and learn tips for turning IT into a revenue-generating powerhouse for the business.
“Tie innovation efforts to driving business growth or customer outcomes," Clay Johnson, Enterprise CIO & EVP, global business services, Walmart
“Be clear about your goals and align metrics directly to those goals. If your company is planning to grow by 200 percent in the next two years, cutting costs is not the right metric,” Mike Macrie, CIO, Land O’Lakes
“Stay on top of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet with others in and outside of your industry, including VCs and technology companies. Take your business partners along,” Mojgan Lefebvre, CIO, global specialty business unit, Liberty Mutual
“Tie performance metrics to business outcomes and adjust compensation to reflect shared accountability,” Martha Heller, CEO, Heller Search Associates, Author, “Be the Business: CIOs in the new era of IT”
“Recruit world-class talent,” Lynden Tennison, CIO, Union Pacific
“Work closely with customers and learn everything you can about the business and how to add value,” Stephen Gold, CIO, CVS Health
“Start small, work in pieces, show tangible results, and go from there,” Michael Gabriel, former EVP & CIO, HBO GO
Download the
full report to get more wisdom and advice from these 15 innovative CIOs.
