"Align budget with business objectives rather than IT objectives, it just makes more sense"

Bryan Bechtoldt
CTO
SVA Consulting

Bryan is the Chief Technology Officer with SVA Consulting, LLC, an affiliate of SVA Certified Public Accountants; S.C. Bryan works on developing SVA products that deliver high business value to our clients. He looks at the technology horizon, then positions, as well as, advises on how to best leverage this rapidly changing landscape to drive maximum business impact.

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations

We are working hard to develop decision support structures at an organization level. These decision support structures move into the organization in the form of business intelligence tools, with the tool tuned to the users’ organizational level and role. The key is that all information shared through the decision support structure comes from common tables in the enterprise data warehouse, and because of this all users receive the same data regardless of the interface. This “one version of the truth” if you will, is essential to these systems taking root in the organization. Confidence in the data drives value in the system, and common answers across the organization speaks to the credibility of the system and therefore the confidence of the end users resonates.

The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier

This is about partnership in the business, and being able to listen and learn from the people on the front lines. IT cannot lead business transformation without the business buy in, leadership and participation. We have spent a great deal of time understanding how we can leverage technology to help it move faster, easier and more accurately. The key is placing technology where it can naturally assist the business.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

These tools give us the ability to listen to our clients in a new, less formal manner and then correlate all of the messaging into sentiment, of general feelings about our brand. We can then correlate this against the sentiment of competitor’s brands and analyze our position. With social media we are able to do this correlation in much more real and meaningful ways and in much smaller timelines across much larger populations. It is hard to comprehend what this will be able to do to adjust our brand and capitalize on our strengths. I am excited about the potential impact of these advancements.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO

For me, it is less and less about the hardware and about the control paradigm for IT. It is less about rigidity. It is all about business impact, elevating our organization for success and empowering the business unit leaders to shape the technology impact in their specific areas of expertise. We then help them achieve their business goals by applying IT's best practices to the technologies they desire to use, giving them the ability to succeed without flying solo from IT. I am talking about a partnership, where each of us bring our strengths to the table to drive impact.

Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs

• Listen to the business and help them leverage technology to create an advantage. Realize that there are strength in sharing control, and a collaborative approach benefits all. Realize that the speed of business is accelerating through the use of technology
• Align budget with business objectives rather than IT objectives, it just makes more sense
• Encourage your team to learn the business, so you can enlist their collective IQ in direction of technology in the business
• Focus on ROI rather than SLA
• Do not be afraid to change, the change window is upon us. It’s time to forge ahead