The increasing importance of IT is becoming a vital topic to the board of directors.

“Maximizing performance through IT strategy”: so is titled the latest Report by Deloitte consulting. This latter is the result of a research initiative aimed at exploring how board of directors are approaching IT.

It seems long time has passed since Big Blue (IBM) has been adopting podcast technology to update its staff in order to improve collaboration and effectiveness, and inevitably the importance of IT has ranked to the top of organization hierarchies (to use an old-fashioned and bureaucratic definition).

So, the IT topic has become an hot one and an increasing number of directors is becoming aware of its intrinsic value.

The research has pointed out how IT strategy, combined with an appropriate set of indicators aiming at measuring and monitoring the value of IT implementations, correlates to better business performance.

Yet Directors often lack adequate information on IT strategy. The negative consequence is that IT lack effectiveness in supporting business.

Once the board has understood and has become aware of IT importance (this trend is ongoing), the next step should be devoted to talking about it in the boardroom. The board directors have to work out the most appropriate methodology and a set of indicators aiming at measuring and monitoring the value of IT in their companies.

Last, but not least, from the above follows the importance of introducing into companies the functions of Chief information officers (CIO) and Chief technology officers (CTO) serving as a connection with the Board itself, in order to forward the IT department requests, in a plain, intelligible language and not in the technical IT jargon.

The overall hints and procedure will result in a maximed performance of the company, achieved through IT strategy and its optimised implementation.

To read the introduction to the Deloitte's Report, on which the above piece of writing is based:
Maximizing performance through IT strategy, where you can also download the Report in pdf format.

To read more on this topic go to Deloitte's: Information technology and the Board

The increasing importance of IT is becoming a vital topic to the board of directors.