Lead The Way For The Business

The IT organization must assume a leading role in guiding the business on its information and analytics transformation journey, The Hackett Group concluded. "To do this, IT must take ownership of the enterprise information architecture, which has changed dramatically."

This could pose a challenge for today's corporate IT organizations, especially the CIO, according to the results of a separate, global study of more than 700 CIOs by solution provider giant Logicalis. The study, released last month, said CIOs have less control over IT spending than they had before, with 40 percent of CIOs saying they make no more than half of their companies' IT spending decisions.

Solution provider take: If the CIO needs to gain some clout, a solution provider that can act as a trusted adviser can help. When VeriStor, a solution provider based in Duluth, Ga., talks with a client about a digital transformation project, "We … ask a lot of questions, actively listen, and then try to align the service offerings to what the customer wants," said Michael Stolarczyk, vice president of business development, cloud services.