How CFOs Fit In To IT

CFO.com clearly related some great IT advice from a CFO:

Four years ago, [Richard Tobin] the CFO was put in charge of the IT department of SGS Group, a SFr4.3 billion (€2.7 billion) Swiss firm that provides inspection, testing, certification and verification services. To keep up with the latest developments in technology, Tobin regularly reads reports from IT research firms as well as the coverage in the daily business press. He also meets with executives from companies using software applications that SGS is considering, in order to get a firsthand account of their effectiveness.

I particularly like Tobin’s meetings with executives who are considering similar software. This sounds like pre-emptive action done prior to actually doing vendor references- I wonder how he gets the contacts?

Continuing, CFO.com relates Tobin’s common sense view of IT:

Tobin — who says that the most involvement he had with IT before SGS was being part of an ERP implementation — believes that CFOs shouldn’t be nervous of tech jargon. “People get intimidated by the technical language but the fact of the matter is that even in an IT organisation, only 10% of people actually deal with code, which is really the technical end of it,” he says. And after all, he points out, most IT applications come pre-configured and are ready to plug in out of the box.

Even though technology is getting better and better, the management of IT can be performed by what are thought to be non-IT types. Good common sense management trumps detail IT knowledge every time.

Are you an IT Manager? or a CIO? How do you react to the sage advice offered by this CFO?

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