The job of the CIO has changed dramatically in recent years. Seventy-six percent of CIOs say their roles are becoming more strategic as organizations look to use information to create a competitive advantage. By providing information access that will help employees exceed performance expectations, increase customer satisfaction, and fuel expansion, CIOs are being called on to contribute directly to growth.

How can CIOs improve decision-making and optimize performance? Despite vast amounts of
crucial business data residing in disparate systems, according to a recent survey of IT executives 64 percent of CIOs don’t think management has the right information to run their business. A CIO’s ability to utilize technology to distribute that information in the format users want has fuelled the shift in their responsibility.

Business intelligence (BI) allows organizations to integrate applications and databases essential to users and enables analysis of information to optimize decision-making. The hitch is in finding the right combination of information accessibility and processing power to effectively support BI across the extended enterprise.