Forming Your IT Dream Team: Building an Effective IT Steering Committee
By Sean Gill, Director of Client Strategy
IN THIS ARTICLE:
Technology plays a pivotal role in driving companies forward in today’s business landscape. However, for many business owners and decision-makers, navigating the intricacies of IT and getting the right input from the right stakeholders can be challenging.
To streamline this process, we recommend establishing an IT Steering Committee within your organization. This ensures seamless alignment of your IT services with your business goals.
The Role of an IT Steering Committee
An IT Steering Committee serves as a cornerstone for aligning technology initiatives with your broader business goals. Bringing together diverse expertise from within your organization within this committee ensures that IT decisions are not made in isolation. This provides the opportunity for representatives from various departments and management levels to collaborate and ensure that IT initiatives are in harmony with the organization’s vision.
Examples of roles that may be part of an IT Steering Committee:
- Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or Chief Operations Officer (COO): High-level strategic guidance and organizational objectives
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO): Budgetary and financial insights and alignment
- CIO or IT Director: Providing strategic direction and oversight for all IT initiatives.
- HR Representative: Human resource factors such as training needs related to IT, organizational changes, hiring projections, etc.
- Key departmental leaders: Offering pertinent operational information and insight or bringing technology needs to the team for deliberation and decision.
- IT Manager or IT Team Lead (for companies with in-house IT teams): Technical expertise and practical insights.
Including an appropriate combination of these key stakeholders in planning conversations with your IT service provider’s Client Strategy Team can be a winning combination.
The Value of Integrating your IT Provider into your Committee
Next comes the “IT” part of the Steering Committee: your IT provider’s Client Strategy resources. For clients of CIO Solutions, this would be your vCIO and/or Client Success Manager.
Our advisors use their experience and in-depth knowledge of client needs, industry trends, and emerging technologies to contribute valuable guidance in your IT Steering Committee conversations. These insights can help bridge the gap between technical capabilities and practical business requirements.
The combination of all these perspectives ensures that the committee is tailoring your business’s IT strategies to meet technical standards and directly address your specific needs. This leads to more personalized and effective solutions.
Steps to Establish an Effective IT Steering Committee
Creating an effective IT Steering Committee involves several key steps.
- Identify the right individuals within the organization who offer diverse perspectives and expertise for this committee. This is essential.
- Establish a structured meeting format and frequency to ensure consistent progress and accountability.
- Define clear rules for decision-making so the discussions lead to practical, actionable results.
Maximizing the Impact of Your IT Steering Committee: Collaboration Between Your Stakeholders and Your Client Strategy Team
Imagine the collaboration in action: your business’s real-world needs and roadblocks meeting the practical and technical guidance of your IT provider’s Client Strategy team. This synergy between your needs and technical options is transformative.
Take inspiration from one of our actual client examples, we’ll call them ACME Corporation. After hitting internal resistance to moving key IT initiatives forward, the COO decided it was time to create an IT Steering Committee that included themself (COO), their VP of Engineering, their CFO, and the CIO Solutions vCIO. This team’s goal was to review open issues affecting the business that required a change to technology implementation, as well as future projects that would require technology inputs to be completed successfully. Specifically, they were able to plan and implement security initiatives that achieved the company’s compliance needs.
By meeting regularly, they tailored their solutions to match their business requirements, including those of individual departments and avoided potential backtracking and unanticipated issues that might have occurred if those key stakeholders’ perspectives hadn’t been included in the original plan. This resulted in a significant increase in project success and overall satisfaction for ACME Corp, exemplifying the tangible benefits of such collaboration.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, forming an IT Steering Committee and integrating that with the expert resources your IT provider offers is key. It ensures that tech planning doesn’t occur in a vacuum but instead aligns with broader business goals so that your investments directly enhance your business productivity and satisfaction.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean has been shaping the IT strategies of businesses across a wide range of industries and sizes for over 10 years. He leads the Client Strategy team at CIO Solutions, while working with business leaders every day to create a clear IT vision, mature technology solutions, and ultimately, enhance business productivity and security through technology.
He and the rest of the Strategic Client Services team at CIO Solutions are constantly evaluating important trends in the industry and advising clients on best practices and long-term IT strategies for success.
Not sure where to start with establishing an IT Steering Committee? Don’t hesitate to reach out to your vCIO or Client Success Manager!
Not a CIO Solutions client? Contact us to explore your options!