How well do you really know your business? To become a strategic leader, CIOs need to understand not just the specific needs of business units but also the needs of the company as a whole, especially how it allocates its limited resources, advises Augusto Perazzo, consultant with the PA Consulting Group.

To best understand what drives your organization, you have to know the markets it is trying to reach, the products and services in these markets, and the way customers consume what you're selling, Perazzo suggests in a post at CIOUpdate.  It is by seeing these markets and services clearly that an IT executive can really understand which business functions contribute to the organization's main goals.

Given the continued combined pressures of reduced budgets and heightened expectations, the IT department needs to focus on the most vital services and most vital parts of the enterprise platform. The most vital components and services are those that support the most vital business functions. The way to figure out which functions those are, you can conduct a business impact analysis, which evaluates the impact that a business function would have on the organization if it were disrupted.

What you find may not be welcome news to everyone in the organization, however: "It is important to notice that the results of this work might question the existence of some functions, so it is important that IT take a non-confrontational position and help business functions realign to support critical aspects of the business," he writes.

It may take some work to make these assessments, but the knowledge gained will help you think more strategically when it comes to deciding where to spend the IT budget, what to outsource, what services to get rid of and what new ones to add. 

For more:
- see Augusto Perazzo's post at CIOUpdate

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