CIO Priorities Take Aim at IT Resource Drain

Supporting a Remote Workforce

Self-service is not new but the fact that CIO priorities are focused here now more than ever… is new.  Supporting a remote workforce has exposed clear deficiencies – one being the ability to provide valuable and dependable self-service.  By doing this, CIO’s can reduce resource drain and better service customers.  System end-users want to access information quickly, easily, and increasingly, without picking up the phone. Self-service support presents an attractive value proposition. Users can access information on-demand (and send feedback), giving IT support resources more time to focus on other priorities.

Yet – building a stellar portal can be daunting. Self-service options succeed only when information is accessible, complete, and actionable. For issues that require additional support, users must have the ability to submit a request quickly and to track that request through the cycle. Understanding where it is, and when to expect a response is a key to adoption. Here are a few questions you can ask when looking to build a comprehensive self-service framework.

• Do you have an IT Service Catalog in place?
• Is it easy to navigate?
• Is it WCAG 2.0 AA Compliant?
• Can it be easily updated by your technicians?
• Can you take iterative feedback from end-users?

Facilitating Remote Teams

There is nothing easy about project management, and when everyone is remote – everything gets harder.  For this reason, CIOs are prioritizing team coordination & collaboration – whether that is simplistic teamwork or more complex projects using waterfall, agile, kanban, or cardwall.  There is a clear need to reduce resource drain and to keep teams focused and interacting and intersecting at the right times & right place – having supporting technology is critical.

Enterprise Integration

Enterprise integration is the hot topic of 2020 and beyond.  On average, an organization has over 500 applications – all running around with their own data, their own rules, and workflows – getting these systems to talk to each other and to orchestrate work and data is just as important as getting people to collaborate. True enterprise connectivity involves people, processes, and systems.  As we move forward, CIO priorities are squarely fixed on digital transformation and organizations are investing in integration and workflow platforms to make it happen.