When IT Drives the Bus

"It can be appropriate for the CIO to help push business along in terms of strategy," says Forrester vice president and principal analyst Bobby Cameron. And that doesn't necessarily mean the CIO taking on a second full-time job. When Kelly Clark joined Exante Financial Services, a financial services provider for the health-care industry, he wanted to change the IT strategic planning process.

"Generally, it's done at the end of the year," explains Clark. "You look at the budget, see you have X number of dollars and figure out what you can do. It's reactive." Clark wanted a proactive process, a "business overlay that said, here's what the market is looking for, here's what we have, here's what we need". Exante had a business road mapping process but no business and systems strategy, so Clark told his CEO and CFO they needed one. And they bought it. "So off we went," says Clark. "We created an enterprise strategic plan and IT became a piece of that."

Bethesda Lutheran Homes and Services (BLHS), a faith-based provider of services for individuals with developmental disabilities, was a couple of years into a five-year organizational strategic plan when Brian Tennant became its CIO. But the plan was strategic in name only. "It was generic: Be the best and grow by this amount," recalls Tennant. "But it was unclear why they picked the growth number or how they would measure it. And they hadn't paid much attention to whether it was on track. Nothing was grounded in reality." Frankly, that didn't matter much to Tennant at first. BLHS had acquired Orange County, California-based Good Shepherd Communities in 2005, which increased its size by two-thirds, and there was a "whole pile of modernization to do", recalls Hites, including adjusting the core ERP system. Even with an overarching business strategy, IT's mission was clear: Integrate and upgrade.

Now that all that work is wrapping up, Tennant knows it's time to create a plan to guide his department of 10 through the next three to five years. But Tennant's not waiting for the 105-year-old organization to come up with a new five-year plan specific enough to guide IT; he's helping shape it.

"I see myself as a member of the senior management team who just happens to be in charge of IT," says Tennant. "So I'm taking the opportunity to weigh in early and weigh in on all disciplines, not just my own."

Senior leaders, Tennant included, are vetting the new plan with the board, operating divisions, donors and families of those to whom they provide aid. The goal is to create what they're calling "strategic positioning statements", such as attracting a younger demographic as donors or expanding services or creating financial stability.

"I'm already starting to think about how IT will fit into those goals," says Tennant.