RSSTwo steps back in CIO reporting structure
Or so it would seem according to a new survey from the Society of Information Management, indicating that the number of CIOs reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer has dropped precipitously from last year-down to 31% from 45% according to this Baseline Magazine article. For the most part, as you might expect, CIOs are reporting to CFOs.
This is particularly poor news if you happen to believe, as most of us seem to, that information technology management functions best when it is applied evenly through the organization and not dropped into the bottomless pit of the accounting department. But that is largely what is happening, just as we were starting to drag ourselves out into the sunshine of broader acceptance.
There's another aspect to this, however, which can also be seen in the survey-more CIOs are reporting now to COOs as well as CFOs. And if you also happen to believe-as fewer of you do-that the role of CIO is likely to become absorbed further into operations and to become less of a specialty department as IT itself becomes more utilitarian, then this can be seen as evidence that is in fact happening already.
I can't call a trend out of one year's data, but this is an interesting development to keep an eye on.
There are even some cases there IT reports to HR. I find it interesting, without really knowing if it signifies anything
Now that’s one I have never seen. I’d like to know the rationale behind it, for sure.
My observation about IT falling under the CFO is that it seems to have originated from accounting being one of the early adopters of technology in most organizations, and initially one of the heaviest users. So the CFO was probably originally lumped with responsibility for all technology and the reporting structure is a legacy of sorts, even though it no longer makes much sense.
I’d really be interested in the history of decisions that led to a CIO in the HR department, though!
In the two cases I could study more closely, finance was NOT the early adopters. In both cases the CFO’s were more interested in outsourcing all they could. Both companies were dependent on academics for their business, and HR played a high role