Executive Directors and CFOs often have different measurements than CIOs, by which to evaluate IT spending and different concerns that must be addressed. This discrepancy can sometimes lead to contentious relationships during strategic planning and budgeting between IT and leadership. EDs/CFOs might not fully understand IT and the value that it can enable. CIOs may not understand the nuances of IT budgeting and communicating the value of IT as an investment rather than a cost center. For example, EDs/CFOs may be more concerned with compliance and impact to profitability, on the other hand, CIOs may be looking at application compatibility and maintainability with current staffing. This presentation that will provides ten key points that can help to get everyone on the same page—improving the organization’s ability to achieve its mission and focusing on the future.

1. INTRAPRISETECHKNOWLOGIES LLC
Ten Ways to Bring IT to the
Leadership Table
NTEN Webinars
May 17, 2011
Presented by
Donny C. Shimamoto, CPA.CITP
INTRAPRISETECHKNOWLOGIES LLC
Technologies and knowledge for synergizing your intraprise
www.intraprisetechknowlogies.com | Hawaii | California
1

2. Today’s Session
10 Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
– Improve communication between IT and
executive management
– Communicate the business value of IT projects
– Insight into why the CFO and other execs are
asking certain questions
– Develop your business skills as a technical
manager
Outcome: Create a paradigm shift toward
improving the organization and focusing
on the future
2

3. Donny C. Shimamoto, CPA.CITP
Background & Experience
Alumni of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
– Strategic Technology Group
– Financial Audit and IT Audit
– Washington Consulting Practice
Founder of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC
– Organizational Development advisor with a focus on
Business Intelligence and Performance Management
– Business Process Improvement with emphasis on internal
controls and technology risk management
– IT Outsourcing for small and middle market organizations
Notable Not-for-profit Clients
– Hawaii Community Foundation, Catholic Charities Hawaii,
Moiliili Community Center, American Institute of CPAs

4. Donny C. Shimamoto, CPA.CITP
Involvement, Awards, and Recognition
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
– Governing Council (2010+)
– Assurance Services Executive Committee (2009+)
– Co-Chair, Business Intelligence Workgroup (2009+)
– IT Executive Committee (2006-2009, 2011+)
Association of IT Professionals
– Honolulu: Board (2008), Treasurer (2009, 2011), President (2010)
– National: Chair – Governance Task Force (2009), Member - Strategic
Planning Committee (2009), Facilitator – AITP Professionalism Advisory
Council (2010)
Awards & Recognition
– Presidents Award
2010, Hawaii Society of Certified Public Accountants
– Top “40 Under 40” Accounting Professionals in the US
2007 & 2009, CPA Technology Advisor Magazine
– Top High Tech Leaders in Hawaii
4 2004, Pacific Technology Foundation & Technology News Network

5. Audience Poll #1
How many of you come from
– Internal IT Department
– Finance Department
– Programs/Department
– IT Vendor
– Academia
5

6. Audience Poll #2
What level of the organization do you
primarily operate at:
– Executive Director / CIO / CTO / CFO
– Program Manager / Department Head
– Team Lead / Area Supervisor
– Staff / Front-line Worker
– Consultant
– Sales/Marketing
– Academia
6

7. Audience Poll #3
What size of organization are you from?
– Large/Global Enterprise
– Large/National Enterprise
– Middle Market
– Small Business
– Large Vendor/Consultancy
– Local Vendor/Consultancy
– Academia
7

8. The IT – Business Disconnect
IT often reports to a non-IT person at the
executive level
– CIO Executive Director/CEO, CFO, COO
IT is usually somewhat of a black sheep for
these executives
– high level of technical jargon
– unique operating practices inherent in IT
– Lack of time or desire to fully understand IT
8

9. IT’s Challenges
People don’t understand IT
– People assume that technology is a cure-all for
any problem related to data and “automation”
– People think “enterprise IT” is as simple as
“personal IT” and “retail IT”
IT forgets that technology is an enabler
– IT forgets that technology is only a tool, and that
IT must support People and Processes
– IT has the “built it and they will come” mentality
– IT forgets that other people aren’t as well versed
in technology as we are
9

10. IT is a part of the overall Organization
IT is often seen as an isolated department
doing its own thing
IT is an integral part of the organization’s
operating infrastructure
– Technology has become more ubiquitous in our
operations and communications
– IT is one of the foundational departments, along
with Finance and Human Resources
When you approach IT from an integrated
perspective
– the way you manage IT changes dramatically
10

11. Audience Poll #4
Consider the following statement:
I have a clear understanding of our
organization’s mission and strategic plan.
Do you:
– Strongly Agree
– Agree
– Neutral
– Disagree
– Strongly Disagree
11

12. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
1. Do you have a clear understanding of the
organization’s mission and goals?
A disconnect in the answer to this question
usually has two causes:
(a) the business strategy is not well defined or
communicated, or
(b) IT management lacks the broader ability to
think at the strategic level.
Clear communication of the business strategy is
one of the most common deficiencies in
12 underperforming organizations

13. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
2. What role does IT play in helping the
organization achieve its goals?
How does IT enable, facilitate, or otherwise
contribute to the achievement of the goals?
– Sometimes IT thinks it plays a larger role that it does from
the executive perspective
– Other times IT has underestimated its role and executives
expect more
Coming to an agreement on IT’s role can help to
clearly set the organization’s expectations of IT
– Sets the scope of work that IT is expected to perform
It is crucial to ensure that the definition of success
13 for the IT Department is understood by all

14. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
3. What is your strategy to fulfill IT’s role?
Answer = “The IT Strategy”
Focus on the role (the need/the how) and
not on IT (the technology/the what)
Technology is only an enabler and a tool,
the IT Strategy should be focused on
identifying the right technologies and
practices to help in fulfilling IT’s role
14

15. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
4. What are the risks inherent in our current
IT strategy?
Increasing dependence on technology,
requires identification, assessment, and
mitigation of IT-related risks
– Discuss them as Business Risks
– Establish the Risk Tolerance Level
Requires effort from both programs and IT
15

16. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
4. What are the risks inherent in our current
IT strategy?
Management and Programs should
– Help IT understand critical business operations and the
implications of technology-related failure or disruption
IT should
– Help executive management assess the IT-related risks
and understand the options for mitigating those risks
The Objective should be
– To manage (not eliminate) IT-related risk to an
acceptable level for the organization
16

17. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
5. How are we spending our IT investment?
Do you run IT?
– As a Cost Center – spending must be controlled
and reduced
– As a Business – must generate “profit” or “return
on investment”
Both approaches have plusses and minuses
– There are implications based on IT’s role in the
organization to using either model
17

18. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
5. How are we spending our IT investment?
Answer: BOTH
Use Gartner’s Run-Grow-Transform model
– RUN = keep the organization running
– GROW = projects and initiatives that seek to
improve organizational efficiencies and
effectiveness
– TRANSFORM = providing new capabilities,
products, or services
18

19. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
5. How are we spending our IT investment?
Your
IT Budget Entity A Entity B Entity C
Org?
Run 80% 60% 50% ??
Grow 20% 30% 30% ??
Transform 0% 10% 20% ??
None of these spending patterns are “wrong”.
They just represent different types of IT roles/investment.
19

20. Audience Poll #6
Which organization do you most resemble?
IT Budget Run Grow Transform
A. Entity A 80% 20% 0%
B. Entity B 60% 30% 10%
C. Entity C 50% 30% 20%
D. None of the above
E. Not sure
20

21. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
Questions 1-5 are broad/strategic questions
What are the organization’s goals?
What is IT’s role?
How will IT fulfill its role?
How are we managing IT-related risks?
Does our investment in IT match its Role?
These must be balanced with the tactical question
“Are we maximizing the value of what we have?”
21

22. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
6. Are we realizing the potential of our
current applications?
How many times has an application
already had the functionality you or a user
wanted, you just didn’t know it was there?
Are critical applications effectively
implemented in the programs/depts?
Look inward first before looking outward.
22

23. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
6. Are we realizing the potential of our
current applications?
External solutions usually require higher
budgets, more training, additional risk.
IT alone, may not have all the answers
– IT may understand the technology/data
– Programs/Depts can help provide context and
determine the value of functionality/information
Make an educated determination together whether
23
you need to look outside for a solution

24. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
7. What are you doing to manage the service
level provided to the organization?
IT is a service provider to the organization
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are often
used for vendors, why not for internal IT?
– Well defined expectations and objectives
– Use SLAs to demonstrate implications of
budget or spending decisions’ impact to IT’s
ability to deliver the expected level of service
Answer: “Is IT performance appropriately measured?”
24 How do you know IT is performing well or poorly?

25. Audience Poll #7
Where are you in the adoption of cloud
computing?
A. Everything we could move is in the cloud
B. We are in the process of moving to the cloud
C. We are in the planning stage
D. We are analyzing the feasibility
E. We haven’t considered it yet
F. We have decided not to move
to the cloud
G. Don’t know/Not sure
25

26. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
8. Have we properly balanced internal-IT vs.
outsourced-IT (incl. Cloud Computing)?
Myriad of reasons for and against outsourcing
– Every organization is different—no one answer
– Pros and cons must be evaluated through different
perspectives: financial, operational, process, strategy
Outsourcing approaches to consider:
1. Outsource commodity IT (e.g. e-mail)
– Keep competitive advantage IT in-house
2. Outsource “back of the house” IT (e.g. data center)
– Keep “personal touch points” in-house
26

27. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
8. Have we properly balanced internal-IT vs.
outsourced-IT (incl. Cloud Computing)?
The important thing is to go through the
thinking process of evaluating alternatives
– Go back to IT’s role and how specific functions
within IT support fulfillment of that role
– What is the best use of in-house IT resources?
– What is the proper balance to best achieve the
business objectives and org’s mission?
– Remember that IT is biased in this analysis!
27

28. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
At this point we’ve looked at:
Where do we need to go?
What is IT’s role in getting there?
How can we get there? (investment)
Are we managing what we’re doing now?
Now we want to switch and at look at:
What may hinder us from getting there?
28

29. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
9. What is the biggest challenge you are
currently dealing with as our IT leader?
Designed to turn the focus back to the IT
leader him/herself.
– May be a personal challenge
– May be a professional challenge
– May be an organizational challenge
– May be a technical challenge
A double-edged sword for the IT leader
29

30. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
9. What is the biggest challenge you are
currently dealing with as our IT leader?
Don’t be afraid to show weakness
– Treat this as an opportunity to demonstrate
your understanding of the organization’s needs
– Seek help in areas where you may not be as
competent and other managers can help
A good ED/CxO will see this as an
opportunity to help the IT Leader to grow
30
professionally

31. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
10. What one (currently unfunded) project do
you think would provide the most value to
the organization?
Business-focused IT leader:
– may bring a project to the table that may help
improve a current business process
Technology-focused IT leader:
– may bring a project that involves emerging
technologies or provide increased functionality
Neither answer is necessarily correct or wrong as long
as a justifiable business case is there.
31

32. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
10. What one (currently unfunded) project do
you think would provide the most value to
the organization?
A project without a business case may indicate:
– Additional nurturing of the IT leader is
necessary to achieve alignment
– Worst case: IT leader needs to be replaced
An opportunity for the IT leader to demonstrate
their understanding of the organization’s business
objectives and how IT can help achieve them
32

33. Audience Poll #8
As a result of this Webinar I am going to:
A. Reflect more on the role of IT in my organization
B. Schedule a meeting with my ED/CxO or IT Leader
C. Realign my organization’s IT Strategy
D. All of the above
E. Do nothing – I am already doing
all of this
G. Not sure – I need to digest this
33

34. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
These questions are conversation starters
– Ensure the proper alignment of IT with
organization objectives and goals…mission.
– Clarify expectations and common understanding
– Communicate how IT is thinking and ensure that
both technical and non-technical managers are
on the same page
None of the questions are technical
– IT is the expert on technology
– How is IT applying its expertise to help achieve
the organization’s mission?
34

35. Ways to Bring IT to the Leadership Table
Everyone should leave the discussion with
improvement in mind:
– Improving the alignment of IT’s activities with
the organization’s mission;
– Improving the organization’s use of its current
technology; and
– Improving the communication between the IT
leader and executive management
IT is an increasingly integral part of any
organization. IT and non-IT management
must be in sync for organizational success.
35

36. INTRAPRISETECHKNOWLOGIES LLC
Closing Thoughts
and Questions?
Donny C. Shimamoto, CPA.CITP
Email: donny@myitk.com
Voice: (808) 735-8324
Twitter: @donnyitk
Thank you for your participation and attention
Feedback or questions are always welcome: donny@myitk.com
36