100% of the Expertise. A Fraction of the Cost.
Expert Guidance Makes all the Difference
Solve your IT Affordably
The strategic importance – and the complexity – of technology in modern business models have never been higher. Because IT skills are so different from those possessed by many business leaders, most CEOs and Boards of Directors want an experienced leader at the top of their IT organization. The right leader ensures the right choices are made on all strategic IT decisions, which is critical since so many will reverberate for their companies (and may make the difference between empowering them and limiting the entire organization):
- Casting a vision for the company’s IT
- Choosing cyber-security protections
- Ensuring sufficient capacity for system performance and growth
- Nurturing a culture of innovation and service in the IT department
- Collaborating with senior leadership to identify opportunities for IT business impact
- Designing the IT Enterprise Architecture
- Choosing key technology vendors
- Negotiating services, software, and hardware contracts
- Deciding how much to leverage cloud applications/infrastructure
- Deciding what to outsource, insource, and flex
- Determining how to structure the IT department to support the vision
With decisions of this importance on the line, where the spectrum of impact from wise vs. poor decisions is so extremely wide, it’s no wonder that many companies hire full-time CIOs/CTOs for this role, often conducting nationwide/worldwide searches to find the right candidate. Compensation packages have increased significantly in recent years, as the strategic importance of the role has increased far faster than the pool of experienced leaders.
Virtual CIOs offer the Best of Both Worlds
A Middle Option between Hiring an Expensive full-time CIO & Settling for Junior IT Leadership
Virtual CIOs (vCIOs) serve as the head of IT on a contract basis, often part-time. In this capacity they typically fulfill all of the key responsibilities of Chief Information Officers, especially the “highest-leverage” decision points as listed above. Under that oversight, day-to-day operation of the IT platform can be handled by middle-managers and staff, and/or vendor partners.
The rising acceptance of videoconferencing technologies now powers the Virtual CIO (vCIO) model as a fantastic improvement on the traditional Fractional CIO (fCIO) concept. Removing the local geographical requirement opens up a world of expert consultants for our clients, greatly enhancing our ability to match them with an expert from their industry.
In the form offered by Innovation Vista, an organization can gain strategic IT guidance and leadership from an experienced C-level IT leader who has experience in their industry, paying them on retainer to reserve only the time needed for the highest-leverage IT decisions and leadership tasks.
These duties typically include coaching of the organization’s IT management team and collaborating with the executive leadership team, to position the entire organization to execute on the IT strategy and raise tech-driven efficiencies and revenue across the enterprise.
It is the most affordable way for small and midsize organizations to leverage top-level IT leadership to transform their IT into a strategic advantage.
We Combine Our Knowledge & Creativity with Yours
Let's Unleash Innovation Together
Our consultants understand the value of collaboration with your leadership team; we do not arrive as “know-it-all” consultants. We want to align the IT strategy and culture with that of the overall organization, and that requires building trust first, then laying out a strategy, then building the IT capabilities to implement the plan.
We’d love to discuss with you how we can provide 100% of our consultants’ expertise for a fraction of a full-time CIO compensation package.
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