New Breed: Today’s CIO Must Manage Sourcing Portfolio Too

An insightful post  by John Sloat on Information Week’s Web site uses the example of Australian airline Qantas (disclosure: a TPI client) to make the point that today’s information leaders need to be able to juggle their own homegrown projects with managing multiple, even overlapping, sourcing relations with outside vendors. 

Gone are the days when CIOs were judged solely on their ability to deliver and maintain new systems. Now the performance review measures whether the CIO can balance a technology strategy with a comprehensive “resourcing” plan to deliver the Three Cs: topflight Capabilities, desired Capacity and best Cost.

Few companies believe they can get all three without turning to outside providers, which is how CIOs took on the extra responsibility of managing a portfolio of external resources.

From my vantage, the progressive CIOs are dedicating significant time to their resourcing strategies, trying to get everything in line with the overall business plan.

Any astute CIO knows that outsourcing has to be considered as a service-delivery option. It certainly is the appropriate choice when an external firm can do a job better than you can. But the hard work only begins at this point. Managing the seams between outsourced service and internal function is more art than science.

Look for the stock of the most artful CIOs to keep climbing.