A vCIO Sets IT Strategy, Culture, and Vision
If you don’t have a CIO, who is currently setting the IT strategy, culture and long-term vision? Often, this work falls to the Owner, President, CEO or Office Manager, who is often not fully equipped for the task in terms of experience or availability to do the job.
Setting a vision for IT typically falls to the ranking in-house IT person. But again, whatever this person’s job description says, their day-to-day work role is typically consumed by firefighting and project management rather than strategic planning and effective budget forecasting. There’s no time to craft an effective long term IT strategy, to research and compile detailed budget forecasts or to truly align the technology plans with corporate goals.
Similarly, an MSP or other 3rd party vendor may offer consulting services, little bits of direction here and there, but do they sit with the stakeholders at every level to craft a plan that meets everyone's needs or is it limited to the squeakiest wheels or their single point of contact? MSPs face a similar problem: too busy firefighting and being reactive to be future focused. The typical MSP is very often limited to specific technology vendors with who they have aligned. This creates a very constrained position from which to try and give objective advice.
This is where the vCIO excels. Your vCIO isn’t burdened with the daily minutiae and reactive response activities. Your vCIO also has the time to invest in interviewing stakeholders. This expert has the deep consulting
background and multi-industry experience to set a strategic and cultural IT vision and create a technology blueprint to bring it to fruition.
The vCIO should be able to answer questions and craft strategies around:
IT Strategy
IT Culture
IT Budgets
Cybersecurity
Employee On-boarding / Off-boarding
Staff IT and Security Awareness Training
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Infrastructure Design (To Cloud or Not to Cloud?)
M&A Integrations
Scalability Goals
Data Management and Analytics
Business Processes
Partnering with an established vCIO can transform your IT from a necessary evil to a competitive advantage in both your firm's market as well as in the employee retention and job satisfaction space. Happy Staff = Happy Clients! Have you ever been on the phone with another firm and heard the representative complaining about slow and inefficient IT? Hold on a minute while I wait on my system, etc.? It leaves a bad taste in the client's mouth. Flip the Script and watch the positive results resonate at all levels of your business.
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