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No. 4: Know Your Priorities
If told that they had to get rid of half their direct reports, any number of decent managers could generate a list of the most-to-least important staffers in 15 minutes.
CIOs need to have a similarly sure feel for their projects. Usually, what determines the importance of an IT project is its contribution to some strategic initiative and an internal rate of return that demonstrates its value conclusively. "Everything has to have an ROI," says Joe Gallo, CIO of Dispatch Printing, a $120 million company that owns the Columbus Dispatch and other newspaper and television properties in its home base of Ohio.
For Gallo, one current priority is a new order-entry system that will automate a process that is now very labor-intensive. Once the Web-based system is complete, advertisers will be able to buy ad space online and adjust the look and feel of their ads from their computers—a far cry from the days when that function required the involvement of a sales or customer service rep. That will allow Dispatch, which has struggled to grow in recent years, to save money on a transaction it does hundreds of times a week. It may also give a boost to the company's classified business, by making Dispatch's dealings with small advertisers more profitable.
At M/I Homes, which is suffering through its worst downturn in more than a decade, one top project now is an online design center that lets customers pick more options—a granite countertop, say, or Moen faucets—than they could by visiting a model home in Charlotte or West Palm Beach, Fla. In the one location where M/I is already testing it, the online design center has boosted customers' purchase of higher-margin options. That has reinforced management's support for the project, even though, at more than $1 million, it's a relatively big-ticket item.
The online design centers "have an opportunity to increase our revenue and increase our customer satisfaction—which could in turn increase our referral rate," says CIO Frissora. "If we were to cancel that project, it would really have a big impact."
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