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Reporting Relationship Can Influence CIO Role |
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A new report released this month by Forrester Research sheds some interesting light on the relationship between who a CIO reports to and how they view their role within an organization.
To prepare the report Forrester surveyed 503 senior IT executives on how IT is run in their organizations, how it is structured, and how it is perceived.
Overall, the survey found that about 34% of CIOs reported to the chief executive officer, followed by chief financial officer at 18% and chief operating officer at 16%. The results varied quite widely by industry with 37% of CIOs in finance and insurance reporting to the CEO, compared to only 24% of CIOs in the media, entertainment and leisure sector.
The more fascinating aspect of the survey related to how CIOs perceive their role in the organization or their primary areas of focus.
When the CIO reported directly to the CEO, it was estimated that about 23% of their time was spent on ways to lower IT costs and 20% of their time was spent looking for ways to improve the company’s business with new IT.
When the CIO reported directly to the CFO, it was estimated 27% of their time was spent on lowering IT costs, versus only 12% spent on looking for ways to use new IT to improve the business.
Forrester principle analyst Bobby Cameron says that while the survey found reporting relationships didn’t make a radical difference, it clearly did make some difference.
Those reporting to the CFO fit the cliché of being more focused on counting beans than being a business driver. “They had the smallest budgets as a percentage of revenue and focused the least on improving business with new IT – with the largest chunk of their time spent on reducing costs,” Cameron wrote in the report.
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