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Stabilizing IT

Virtual CIO Case Study · Paying By the Drink for the Right Wine

Buying wine by the bottle (or case) may be the most economic option to acquire it at scale, but if a bottle is beyond your means or needs, and you find the particular vintage you want, paying by the drink is the right option. And so it is with Virtual CIOs (aka Fractional CIOs/Remote CIOs/Part-time CIOs)... This quote is actually from one of our recent clients, a mid-size company who engaged our Virtual CIO service to provide IT leadership to several IT groups who had previously reported separately to the CEO.   Why Our Case Studies are Anonymous Innovation Vista does not list our clients on our website or post a "logo page"; we do not issue press releases to announce client signings or project successes.  This policy is an important extension of our care and protection of our clients' strategies, in order to avoid letting their competitors know anything [...]

By |2021-01-11T09:53:11-06:00September 21st, 2020|Digital Transformation, Enterprise Systems, Innovation, IT Leadership, Optimizing IT, Stabilizing IT|
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Escaping the Catch-22 of Post-COVID Digitalization

COVID-19 has escalated and turbo-charged digital transformation across the globe. Prior to COVID, many organizations planned to build out more options for their employees to be more productive by working remotely. They planned to create a way for customers to interact with them and buy from them online, and allow for their management teams to have dashboard views of their internal productivity and customer interactions. Most planned for these enhancements to be phased in over the next few years. Now digital transformation is a necessity for successful business in a post-COVID economy. Yet companies without those capabilities already integrated in will struggle to build them. With the onset of social distancing measures and state mandates for keeping business fronts closed, remote work has never been more essential. It's not just for the sake of productivity, but for safety--and ultimately, worker engagement. Success is now incumbent on a company's ability to [...]

By |2020-10-02T15:11:08-06:00May 18th, 2020|Digital Transformation, Innovation, IT Leadership, Optimizing IT, Stabilizing IT|
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What CXOs should know about Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is a buzzword which has crept into the language of business in recent years, and the definition of the term varies greatly. At Innovation Vista, we define “digital transformation” as the effort to use technology to grow revenue. Digital Transformation - IT strategy insights for CXOs Digital transformation is driven by a broader view of Information Technology than its traditional goals of increasing efficiency and automation to help businesses save money and boost productivity. Today, technology has advanced in ways that allow businesses to do much more than what was possible in the past. Even in its traditional scope, IT has become a major component of most businesses' success. Most corporate executives and C-suites are comfortable with it in this shape and size, but when there’s talk of re-envisioning IT, even with the promise of greater impact, CXOs can become understandably nervous. Hesitations on Digital Transformation One of [...]

By |2020-10-03T13:02:36-06:00December 14th, 2019|Digital Transformation, Enterprise Systems, Innovation, IT Leadership, Monetizing IT, Optimizing IT, Stabilizing IT, Tech Disruption|
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Best IT Strategy for a Non-IT Startup? It Depends

Tech company startups are the darlings of the press and of venture capitalists.  It certainly seems that tech companies dominate the list of "Unicorns" and top IPOs from the last few decades.  Their pace of revenue acceleration (though not necessarily usually earnings) are breathtaking - at least for the few who make it "over the hump" to reach critical mass.  But these are far from the only startup businesses where key IT decisions are needed. In non-IT startup companies, the landscape of tech choices is different, although potentially just as impactful on the company's chances of success.  Tech isn't their product, but in many cases it may make up a significant part of their engine (there is a spectrum of IT impact, of course - that's one reason why "It Depends..")  Interestingly, from the myriad books on the topic of startups pumped out of publishing houses these days, very few [...]

By |2020-10-02T14:56:00-06:00September 12th, 2019|IT Leadership, Optimizing IT, Stabilizing IT|
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JUST Keeping the IT Lights On = Awaiting Disruption

Is your IT just “keeping the lights on”? i.e. Are you just waiting to be disrupted?  Don’t get me wrong – keeping the lights on, avoiding security breaches, even creating organizational/margin efficiency with IT – these are worthy goals. But they are TABLE STAKES in today’s economy; we go far beyond this in our proprietary Innovation framework: → STABILIZE your IT – yes “the lights need to stay on” reliably, securely, auditably → OPTIMIZE strategic trade-offs – get what you pay for, pay to your point of maximum ROIC → MONETIZE your IT – invest in tech capabilities to drive REVENUE & MARKET-SHARE Innovation Vista’s mission is to INNOVATE BEYOND EFFICIENCY for TOP-LINE IMPACT in midsize companies: → Taking market-share with tech capabilities your competitors can’t match → Enabling Digital connection not just in remote teams, but with your customers → Accelerating your existing revenue cycle with deep customer insights [...]

By |2021-01-05T19:53:58-06:00June 18th, 2019|Digital Transformation, Enterprise Systems, Innovation, IT Leadership, Monetizing IT, Optimizing IT, Stabilizing IT, Tech Disruption|
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How is IT Doing? Ask Business Leadership FIRST

"We do a great job.  90% of our KPIs and projects are in the green, and we had 99.9% uptime last month..." ...Comments like this can be indicative of successful IT shops, hitting on all/most cylinders and empowering their companies to great results. ...Comments like this can also come out of IT leaders' mouths in departments which are completely failing their businesses - possibly without them even knowing it.   Wait, you say.  How could Key Performance Indicators be put in place, or projects approved, without the business being on board?  And if 90% of them are in the green isn't that a good sign?  Not necessarily.  They could very well be meaningful, but KPIs may not really measure how well IT is supporting and empowering the business.   Consider these common situations: KPIs surrounding reaction times to requests, but none addressing proactivity KPIs about bug fixes, but none measuring the [...]

By |2020-10-02T14:51:17-06:00December 2nd, 2018|Enterprise Systems, IT Leadership, Optimizing IT, Stabilizing IT|
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A security checklist for CEOs to sleep at night

CEOs are in a complex quandary on information security. On the one hand this is a topic requiring deep technical expertise which is (usually) outside the wheelhouse of CEOs, unless they head up a security tech company. On the other hand, it has become abundantly clear that in the court of public perception (and for that matter, the court of law), it is considered a CEO's personal responsibility to ensure that appropriate protections are in place to protect the information of a company's customers - particularly consumers. No CEO wants to end up on the front page of the newspaper or sued for negligence over a breach. Recent incidents should serve as sufficient motivation: Yahoo - 3.5 billion account details were hacked in two different breaches.  Every single account on a system serving nearly half of the world's population in 2013-14 (not fully disclosed until 2017) Sony Motion Pictures - [...]

By |2020-10-01T14:40:28-06:00September 20th, 2018|Stabilizing IT|
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