Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
C-level executives are about vision, they worry about the strategic development and long-term direction of organizations. Of course, depending on the industry they are in, what is defined as short of long term will vary. Within the group of C-level executives that lead an organization, the Chief Information Officer or CIO is the top information technology (IT) role that has been created to recognize how important IT and other digital technologies are to business success. Their responsibilities lie in the strategic role of IT in implementing the vision, these CIO roles are termed technology provider, strategic supporter, business thinker, innovation driver, integration advisor, and relationship manager (Hütter & R Riedl 2017). It should come as no surprise to readers that, as Business Technology Management (BTM) professionals, we consider the importance of IT to the execution of strategy is well accepted. BTM can include technology planning, project management, support, database services, disaster recovery, network management, security, and document services such as e-billing, document formatting, and mass printing and mailing (Baporikar 2015). Business Technology Management (BTM) growth initiatives related to an Employment Skills Development have been implemented at several universities in Canada (Van Dalen et. al 2014). After all, in today’s world, it is not possible for any person to manage business processes in an organisation of any consequence without the assistance of hardware, software and data.
In a 2014 study of CIOs, executive team members interviewed by Ernst & Young demonstrated what was identified as a consistent view of their limited expectations of CIO’s. They expect them to support the business with cost-effective, reliable and secure IT systems (Wolden et al. 2015) (Wang et al 2017). They need the CIO to be flexible, to inform and challenge the exec’s while not rocking the boat. So this suggests to us that, in a way, they are looking for friendly IT support. This supports our anecdotal observation of the CIO as the head-nerd, who can be held accountable for the governance, acquisition and use of IT in organizations, keeping the CEO and CFO at arm-length and giving them a possible scapegoat if anything goes wrong (Alreemy et al. 2016).
Peppard(2010) has found that, as well as having technical competencies, a successful CIO needs other competencies, such as strong personal attributes including communication and influencing skills, commercial acumen, networking skills, and people management skills. The CIO is at the junction of business and technology in the same way that IT is now seen as more holistic tool that efficiently connects the business processes and all the components of globalized value chains to create value. Therefore, we are now talking more of business technology and less of information technology (Chang et al. 2016).
As we want to educate new IT students to prepare the future CIOs, we need to determine, as the title of this article suggests, an innovative framework to integrate CIO competencies within the Business Technology Management Body of Knowledge (BTMBOK). Wu et. al (2009) supported the use of BTM training for CIO role effectiveness (2008). This requires us to determine what elements are needed in a BTMBOK. Before we can do this, it is essential that we get a better understanding of the requirements. This article was researched and written with this goal in mind, to help discussions and reflection on current efforts to define this BTMBOK.
We will start with defining who is the CIO and what is his role in organizations. This will help to define what are the competencies they require and, furthermore, how we can find reliable information about these competencies. From there we will examine the requirements and contents of a BTMBOK and how we can create an innovative framework to integrate the CIO competencies within the Business Technology Management Body Of Knowledge. Finally, we will propose next steps to further develop this framework in to an operational tool for the BTM community.