CIO services to keep your business aligned with IT and up to date with the latest trends

What is a vCIO?

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A vCIO or Virtual Corporate Information Officer is a necessary role that wears several hats.  The role has grown from a business need that typically was only afforded by larger organizations who could employ a C-Level position of CIO or Corporate Information Officer.  Smaller organizations still have a need for the tasks performed by a CIO, but not necessarily on a full-time basis.  A vCIO can be thought of as a part-time CIO hired out on a contract basis.  At Integrity we provide a vCIO role as part of our Managed IT services.  The tasks our vCIOs complete are critical to our partnerships and help ensure the highest level of IT service we can provide.

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All that is great…but what does a vCIO do for your business?  Below are some of the more critical responsibilities of our high performing vCIO services.

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• Understanding your Business

What are your business’ goals, what is your market, what are your strategies, how does your business operate, and what resources does it take?  A vCIO should have a firm understanding of the preceding questions as well as many other specifics to your business, and how you are planning on meeting goals in both the near and long term.  Understanding your business is critical to properly performing the responsibilities of a vCIO and is particularly important to building a partnership.

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• Relationship Management

A properly executed vCIO engagement will complete regular business reviews.  These reviews often cover a lot of ground, including upcoming projects, review of services completed, ongoing progress to alignment with technical standards and best practices, review of proactive technical activity completed, budgeting initiatives, and other critical non-support activities.

 

• Education

A vCIO will keep abreast on emerging technology.  It is their responsibility to interpret the technologies, how they fit in your organization, and transfer this knowledge in terms the business decision makers can understand.

 

• Implement standards and best practices

Standards and best practices alignment with your company's IT have several faces.  For some businesses it is critical for regulatory compliance.  For all businesses it is critical for delivering high level IT services.  Implementing standards and best practices does not happen overnight.  They often need to be rolled out in phases that meet the technical goals but at the same time don’t cripple your overall goal of continuing business operations.  A vCIO can help navigate implementing standards and best practices in an efficient and planned delivery method while providing the results of standards and best practices in IT.

 

• Planning and Budgeting

As a vCIO learns your particular business, they create a short and long term plan of how to meet the technical goals to make your business more efficient, more profitable, more secure, and reduce any technical gaps.  The plans and budgeting have a direct relationship.  A vCIO will help your company budget for the expense of IT services and develop a plan of how to meet your goals within a predetermined budget.  Often this plan and budget are based on a 1 year, 3 year, and 5 year term to help mitigate any unforeseen expense.