Stories by CIO US staff

Results from CIO magazine’s annual ‘State of the CIO’ survey, now in its 11th year, suggest many IT leaders anticipate a challenging year ahead for their business and industry. But they also remain confident about their team’s performance against outlined metrics and goals. While roughly one in five IT organisations are still perceived by the business as a cost centre, an equal number are now considered ‘business peers’ or ‘game changers’ engaged in developing business strategy or a primary driver of the enterprise’s competitive future.
More CIOs are taking some action to improve or solidify relationships with business stakeholders but a good number are still falling short in this area with survey results suggesting a gap between CIOs’ perceptions and those of their non-IT peers.

Business intelligence, or BI, is an umbrella term that refers to a variety of software applications used to analyse an organisation’s raw data. BI as a discipline is made up of several related activities, including data mining, online analytical processing, querying and reporting.
Companies use BI to improve decision making, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. BI is more than just corporate reporting and more than a set of tools to coax data out of enterprise systems. CIOs use BI to identify inefficient business processes that are ripe for re-engineering.

Recently I sat down for an interview with the former Global CIO of General Motors, Ralph Szygenda, who joined iRise, a provider of enterprise visualisation software for business applications, as a strategic consultant and member of its advisory board earlier this month.
Szygenda is heading up the creation of a CIO advisory council for iRise, which will focus on transformation and business and IT communication issues. He is also leading content direction and speaker recruitment for iRise's events, as well as moderating some of its executive roundtable sessions.