Advice from one CIO to another

It's always a good idea to take a look at how your CIO colleagues are doing in their jobs and what kind of ideas they use to make their job work. There are always lessons that you can transfer to your own job. Take the case of Bill Santille, the CIO at Uline, who has been on the job for just five months. He has a bird's-eye view of his own career, including what went right and what he should have done better. He's got a $30 million budget and 110 employees. And he's got plenty of challenges to do the job right.

His most important vision is "consolidation, as economy of scale through size is critical to reduce transaction costs and increase competitive advantage." Nevertheless he's got plenty of other issues on his 'to do' list, including replacing the company's current Web-based front-end with Internet transactions via Microsoft. His advice for CIOs: "Work directly with business leadership to develop annual and quarterly business plans in order to influence decisions that require IT investments and set expectations on the capabilities of your IT organization."

For more on one CIO's vision:
- See this InformationWeek article