Executive Summary 1

Threats to CIO Job Security 2

Poor Performance 2
Major Application Failure 2
Compliance Failure 2
Missed Deadlines and Exceeded Budgets 3
The Disconnect Between Business Managers and IT 3
Strategies Ensuring CIO Success 4
The Right Management Approach 4
Leadership Skills 4
Management and Communication Skills 5
Alignment with Business Executives 5
The Right Software 5
Vendor Checklist for an Enterprise-Worthy BPM Solution 6
Innovative Development Methods 8
Reducing Project Development Times and Risks 9
Code-Free Development Contributes to CIO Success 13
Sample Applications Built With EnterpriseWizard 14
EnterpriseWizard Technology and Platform 14
Conclusion: The CIO as Hero 15

Page 2 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

CIOs may have the toughest job in IT. After all, they’re responsible for customizing, integrating,
deploying, and supporting hundreds of applications. Simultaneously, they must meet increasingly tough
standards for auditability, up time, and security, while reducing costs and simplifying life for their
business users.
So it’s not surprising that their initiatives are often perceived as falling short. Neither should it come as a
shock that their average job tenure is less than five years. Yet many of the challenges faced by CIOs can
be anticipated and neutralized or eliminated entirely through a combination of business strategies and
appropriate technologies and vendor relationships.
This paper describes the threats to CIO job security and suggests strategies for addressing them. It
argues that a major cause of perceived CIO failures is that IT professionals and business managers have
such different expectations for how long things should take, that IT may be perceived as non-responsive
even when it is doing a superb job with the available technology.
We examine some management approaches of successful CIOs, who commonly exhibit strong leadership
and management skills, as well as the ability to align themselves with their business leaders. Despite
differing time-lines and expectations between IT and business departments, these CIOs deliver the
software solutions their business leaders need, when they need them.
We then address the critical issue of choosing the right software solutions to meet the needs of business
users in a timely manner, without sacrificing scalability, reliability, and functionality. After providing a
checklist of essential attributes for an enterprise-worthy solution, we compare and contrast different
development approaches and their impact on development time and responsiveness.
We examine the time savings provided by the innovative methodology of code-free development in
more detail. Project time lines using this approach are contrasted with more traditional approaches. An
analysis of project stages illustrates why the new methodology reduces deployment times by a factor of
two or more.
The use of resources, in particular, in-sourcing versus outsourcing, is also considered as a means of
reducing deployment times. We lay out some pros and cons of using internal IT staff, external contractors,
and outsourcing.
A description of the benefits of code-free development and its potential contribution to CIO success is
followed by examples of deployments of EnterpriseWizard at Fortune 500 and smaller companies.

Page 1 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

Let’s begin with the ―worst case‖ scenario: when an IT department does not satisfy its company’s business
needs, the CIO is typically let go. By examining the most common reasons for dismissal, we can draw
some conclusions about how they can be avoided.

As summarized in a CIO.com1 article, the primary reason why CIOs are fired is ―poor performance.‖
Surprisingly, this charge can apply even when the IT department has successfully rolled out major new
applications on time and on budget2. Such a deployment may be a success from an IT perspective, but if
the application does not provide ROI to business users, it will still be deemed a failure.
In many cases, CIOs may be using different metrics for success than business users, and so are blind-sided
by such "failures." As Laurie Orlov, a principal analyst from Forrester Research notes, "CIOs need the
ability to run their IT departments in a business-like way. Too many can't talk the same metrics as their
colleagues on the business side."
The key to avoiding this trap is to get close to the business users and actively monitor progress. For
example, online surveys can provide insight into their perspectives and warn of pending issues and
frustrations. Subsequent surveys enable the CIO to measure progress and may help top management
recognize improvements.

When a major application fails, the IT department takes the blame, even if the cause is some
unanticipated circumstance, such as an exceptionally high load. Systems must therefore be scalable to
several multiples of the anticipated loads and fully redundant. Additional recommendations are detailed
in the ―Vendor Checklist‖ section of this document.

Since the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley, failures in this area can mean not just dismissal, but lawsuits and
even jail time for top executives. It is not enough to demonstrate that appropriate procedures exist; it
must be possible to show an auditor how they were followed in any particular instance.
Tracking compliance manually is a costly and unreliable endeavor. A more solid approach is to build
compliance into relevant business processes and the software tools used to automate and manage them.
As a practical matter, this requires software that incorporates compliance as core, not bolted-on,
functionality. The goal should be to build systems that are fully audit-capable because all relevant user
actions are tracked and recorded automatically. Depending upon users to enter audit information is
costly and error prone.

___________________________
1 KimNash, ―One in Four CIOs Fired for Performance,‖ CIO.com, March 11, 2009, www.cio.com/article/484008/
One_in_Four_CIOs_Fired_for_Performance
2 Renee Oricchio, ―Leading Reasons Why CIOs Get Fired,‖ CIO Strategy Center, www.ciostrategycenter.com/wjz/

Board/peers/leading_reasons_why_cios_get_fired/index.html

Page 2 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

There are countless examples of such failures, ranging from Kmart scrapping a software distribution system 3,
to cost overruns in the state of Virginia's outsourcing deal with Northrop Grumman 4. Perhaps most alarming is
The Standish Group’s assertions in their ―Chaos Report‖ that fewer than 35% of projects are considered a
success, and roughly 25% are cancelled.

The key to eliminating such problems is to remove unknowns as far upstream as possible. While it may not be
possible to nail down every detail of a large deployment in advance, it is possible to structure spec
development and implementation milestones so that they are uncovered and resolved before significant
resources are committed. The ―Innovative Development Methodologies‖ section of this document describes
approaches by which development time frames can be reduced and unknowns eliminated for many projects.

Where third parties are involved, it is also desirable to structure the relationship so that the contractor bears
full responsibility for cost containment and delivery time-frames. The ―Vendor Checklist for a Responsive BPM
Solution‖ section of this document describes the attributes of a software system and vendor relationship that
make this possible.

In many cases, a major source of frustration for business managers is that they and IT departments have
completely different time scales. When business managers request a change to an application that supports
their business processes, such as a change in the workflow, they believe it should take no more than a few
days. On the other hand, IT departments typically regard a turnaround time of two months as fast. When a
new software package is being deployed, business managers would like to see it up and running in a matter
of weeks. However, in reality, Business Process Management (BPM) projects often have timelines exceeding
nine months, even in standard areas, such as customer support or change management.
This is so fundamental a difference that CIOs are often shocked to find out how much the IT department’s
deployment schedules are resented. As a result, they’re blind-sided by charges of poor performance.
This really came home during a presentation on ―Software as a Service‖ (SaaS) BPM technologies to a group
of MBAs. During the talk, the presenter said he suspected ―one of the reasons they were choosing SaaS
vendors [as opposed to their in-house IT department] was that the people who caused them the greatest
frustration were not their external competitors or their customers, but rather...‖
Before he even had a chance to finish the sentence, the entire class yelled "The IT Department!" Well, the
entire class apart from two startled IT guys. In his department’s defense, one of these guys remarked that his
users must be happy because they rolled out a new iteration of a certain system every three months. The
MBAs crucified him: "Three months! Don't you understand anything? When I need a change, I need it the next
week. Maybe I can live with two weeks, but three months?! And you're proud of that?"
Within companies, business managers are the customers – and a three-month turnaround time for changes is
not ―quick‖ in their terms, even though it may be positively heroic with certain systems. When IT fails to meet
business requirements, the CIO takes the heat. This happens so often that some joke that the acronym ―CIO‖
has come to mean "Career Is Over.‖
_______________________________________
3 Renee Oricchio, ―Leading Reasons Why CIOs Get Fired,‖ CIO Strategy Center, www.ciostrategycenter.com/wjz/
Board/peers/leading_reasons_why_cios_get_fired/index.html
4 Paul McDougall, ―Virginia Probes Outsourcing Deal, CIO Fired,‖ Information Week, June 2009,

www.informationweek.com/news/government/state-local/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218100342

Page 3 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

Chris Patrick, who runs the global CIO practice group in Dallas for executive recruiter Egon Zehnder says,
"I'm seeing a lack of patience for CIOs who can't deliver results quickly. They hired you to have impact.
You can't go in and lay out the five-year program that starts in year four."
Though those of us in the software trenches realize how unrealistic business managers can be, we must
concede that they have a point. Quick IT project deployment or modification in a rapidly changing busi-
ness environment is imperative.
When Charles Darwin uttered the words, "It's not the strongest, nor the most intelligent that survive,
but the most adaptable," he likely had no idea how much they applied to corporations. Yet as we’ve
seen, the entire economy can go from boom to bust in less than six months, often necessitating a 180-
degree flip of business priorities. Unfortunately, many corporations are stuck with inflexible, difficult-to-
change technologies that hamper adaptability and carry high maintenance costs. With such a long lag
time for deployment or modifications, software is usually out of sync with current needs.

Now, let’s look at some solutions to these challenges. Two key strategies involve using effective manage-
ment approaches to stay ahead of the curve while making the right software decisions to ensure the com-
pany’s success.

A successful CIO must move beyond putting out fires to become a key contributor to the business. This
requires specific people and communication skills as well as an understanding of how to gain the respect
and cooperation of the other high level business managers. Let’s examine these skills more closely.

"A CIO has to demonstrate the right level of sophistication for the job. A lack of leadership will be the
first thing to expose a CIO’s incompetence," says John Stevenson, a former president of the Society for
Information Management, a professional organization for IT leaders.5
As Gartner points out, "Leadership and management are different, but complementary. Management is
about execution. Leadership is about change." CIOs must "influence and lead their business colleagues by
influencing their view of IT.‖6
This task is a lot easier if the changes being proposed are clearly desirable from a business perspective.
For example, if the CIO can propose changes that shorten application deployment times, reduce com-
plexity, and improve IT responsiveness, buy-in will be immediate and enthusiastic. Demonstrable success in
achieving such goals will give the CIO the credibility and political capital necessary to institute other
changes whose benefits may not be so immediately apparent. The ―Reducing Project Development Times
and Risks‖ section of this paper describes a methodology for achieving such goals.

______________________________________
5 Renee Oricchio, ―Leading Reasons Why CIOs Get Fired,‖ CIO Strategy Center, www.ciostrategycenter.com/wjz/
Board/peers/leading_reasons_why_cios_get_fired/index.html
6 Marianne Broadbent and Ellen Kitzis, ―The New CIO Leader: Setting an Agenda and Delivering Results,‖ Gartner

Group, www.gartner.com/5_about/news/gartner_press/NewCIO2.jsp

Page 4 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

CIOs must not only manage IT staff, contractors, and vendors, but also ensure that they work effectively
with business users. This requires people skills, including effective and pro-active communication.7
Regular communication is essential to CIO success but can be time-consuming and prone to falter when
crises and time-crunches occur. While some communications are necessarily verbal, many written communi-
cations can be automated through the development of clear business communication processes and the
help of an effective process automation tool. Putting this kind of system in place can be a lifesaver, since
ensuring that the right people are properly informed is essential to setting accurate expectations and
enabling business requirements to be fully addressed in technology projects.
Developing automated communication processes saves time and eliminates human errors. For example, a
centralized project/change management system can automatically email reports on project statuses to the
appropriate stakeholders, keeping business managers informed about the technology projects that affect
them. Automated alerts can also provide pro-active notifications of pending tasks and, where necessary,
escalate issues and re-assign tasks to ensure that they are completed before they impact delivery time
frames.

"It's essential today that a CIO knows how to fit like a glove with the other C-level executives and other
influential leaders within the organization," says John Stevenson.8
Simply making sure that the servers stay up is not enough. The IT department must provide a tangible
competitive edge from the perspective of the business users. This requires the ability to respond to chang-
ing market conditions, implement management initiatives fast enough to be seen as responsive, and ex-
ploit opportunities while they are still available. In brief, it means agility.

This kind of agility is probably the single most important characteristic that distinguishes embattled CIOs
from their more respected and successful colleagues. How can it be achieved? By ensuring that the soft-
ware used to manage the major business processes of the company is agile -- that is, easy to modify as
needs change, and quick to deploy.
Business Process Management (BPM) software solutions manage and automate a wide range of business
processes - everything from internal and external customer support to sales, marketing, change control,
RMAs, assets, employee expense reimbursement, hiring, HR requests, time keeping, billing, contracts, pro-
jects, and so on. Process automation improves efficiency, reduces manual error, ensures compliance, and
increases reliability, but processes change frequently as the business environment changes. Thus the need
for agility.
To be perceived as responsive to business needs, a BPM solution should enable significant projects to be
built and deployed in weeks and modified in hours or days – a timeline to please even the most demand-
ing CEOs.
______________________________________
7 Carter McNamara, ―Basics in Internal Organization Communications,‖ Field Guide to Leadership and Supervision,
http://managementhelp.org/mrktng/org_cmm.htm
8 Renee Oricchio, ―Leading Reasons Why CIOs Get Fired,‖ CIO Strategy Center, www.ciostrategycenter.com/wjz/

Board/peers/leading_reasons_why_cios_get_fired/index.html

Page 5 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

However, fast is worthless if it also means shoddy, expensive, or unproven. So we must begin our discus-
sion about choosing the right software with a list of technical and business requirements that a system for
enterprise use should satisfy.

The system must be auditable in multiple senses to ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and other
regulations. It must make it easy to show an auditor what a defined business process is, how the system
enforces the process, and how the process has been followed in any particular instance. Further, the solu-
tion should make it possible to capture and collate data, such as who logged in, what IP address they
came from, what records they viewed, edited, etc.

The solution should include prebuilt integration with standard technologies, such as LDAP/Active Directory
and MS Exchange. It should also support a robust set of APIs and scripting options, including Web Ser-
vices. Ideally, even the source code should be accessible – not that you’d want to change it any more
than you’d want to use an emergency parachute, but it is nice to have the option.

Once the system has proven itself in the initial deployment, it should be easily extensible to other business
areas. So, the data models, business rules, workflows, access permissions, and data input forms must be
fully and rapidly customizable.

The solution must scale to support thousands of current users, the update of hundreds of thousands of re-
cords per hour, and databases containing tens of millions of records, without requiring non-commodity
hardware.

The product should be 100% Web-based so that no installation or upgrading of client software is re-
quired. It must support the company’s choice of browser.

The system must support a fine-grained security model for precise access control. The software platform
and hosting infrastructure (if SaaS-based) should be subject to regular security audits from an independ-
ent firm, and the vendor should make the results available.

For SaaS-based products, vendors should provide up-time guarantees reflecting their confidence in the
availability of the service. Some vendors just offer a pro-rata refund, while others return the entire cost of
that month’s service if the target up time is not met. If the product is installed in-house, it should support
high availability options so that service can continue even in the event of a motherboard failure.

The system must support dashboards, charts, and reports providing quick insight into business processes.
Since passive access to information is not always enough, it should also support the creation of business
rules providing active notification of any problems.

Page 6 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

The system should support standards such as HIPPA, ADA, ITIL, and CFR 21 Part 11.

The vendor should offer a SaaS option so that customers don’t need to provision a server to get going.
Once the solution has proven itself, it should be movable to their choice of in-house Linux or Windows
server to allow full integration with sensitive back-end systems without impacting the firewall.

System backups should be fully automated and include everything necessary to move the entire deploy-
ment to another server or restore in case of disaster.

Upgrades should require little effort and must allow migration from any revision to any later revision
without affecting customizations.

The cost to get started must be reasonable and the product should provide a rapid ROI, ideally within the
first few months of use. Getting a reasonably complex production system up and running should take a
matter of weeks, and extending it to cover new processes must be equally rapid, without impacting exist-
ing production use. The cost structure should be simple and inclusive, without hidden extras or per-module
or per-function charges when the system is extended.

IT staff should be able to extend and maintain the system themselves after training. Customers shouldn’t
be tied to long-term dependence on $200-per-hour consultants. Ideally, the training time should be short.
Systems designed to be maintained by the users may require a week of training to reach proficiency,
whereas those designed without this criterion in mind may require over a month of training and carry in-
creased effort and risks when making changes.

The vendor should have a ten-year or more history of providing enterprise solutions. For CIOs of large
companies, the vendor’s track record with other Fortune 500 companies is most relevant. For start-ups,
experience with small companies is of greater interest. The vendor should be financially sound and profit-
able.

The vendor should be able to describe exactly how the software addresses current business need(s) and
demonstrate it running this exact process prior to purchase. It should also be willing to commit to a fixed-
price implementation for the entire project based on an agreed upon specification.
Different vendors may offer different forms of refund if a project fails, ranging from a credit towards
additional software purchases, to a full cash refund of all software costs and consulting services. The
strength of the warranty indicates the vendor’s confidence in their software and implementation services.

Different CIOs may prioritize their requirements differently from this list, but it should serve as a useful
starting point. The extent to which these requirements are supported varies widely among vendors. The
manner in which all of these requirements are met by EnterpriseWizard is detailed on the Vendor Check-
list page at our website – http://www.enterprisewizard.com/vendor-checklist.htm

Page 7 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

 Now that we’ve established some essential quality requirements for a software solution, let’s examine and
evaluate the various means by which software companies attempt to reduce project development times,
since software responsiveness and agility are critical to success.

Methodology Pros and Cons

Integrated Pro: Environments such as .NET and J2EE and scripting languages attempt to reduce development
Development times and provide total flexibility.
Environments
and Scripting Con: In practice, it still takes so long to develop significant applications it is only affordable by soft-
ware companies that spread them out over multiple customers.
Customizable Pro: Software companies provide pre-built applications that can be extended through custom coding
Prebuilt Ap- so that customers can tune the application to their specific needs.
plications
Cons: This solution is only applicable if the pre-built application is reasonably close to the customer’s
requirements. It may be easy to extend an application through custom code, but hard to change the
pre-built/hard-coded behaviors.
Many customers underestimate the cost of maintaining the custom code throughout the life of the pro-
ject. Yet, development only accounts for 20% of the total cost of a typical software project. Eighty
percent of costs come from bug fixes and ―minor enhancements‖ during production use.
Cloud Host- Pro: Cloud offerings, such as AppExchange, EC2, and App Engine, provide a hosting environment for
ing Environ- applications. By leveraging this infrastructure investment, companies are able to offer a highly reli-
ments able service with low upfront costs.
Con: This solves the physical infrastructure problem, but customers still have to build or buy/
customize/integrate applications and pay ongoing monthly charges for an infrastructure that lives
outside their firewall.
Code-Free Pros: Code-free development environments allow applications to be developed and customized using
Development just the browser. As detailed below, this typically takes less than half as long as it takes to customize
Environment traditional prebuilt applications, and applications built on the platform are fully integrated. When
custom coding or integration with 3rd party software is desired, standard languages such as Java,
Perl, or Web Services may be used.
Sample applications developed without coding include: CRM, ITIL, Helpdesk, Sarbanes Oxley,
Change Control, Asset Management, COCOM, Procurement, Provisioning, RMA Management, Con-
tract Management, Equipment Reliability and Performance Tracking, HR and Time Management, and
Event Management.
Cons: The range of applications that can be developed without the addition of custom code is limited
by the core capabilities of the system. Although this has not been an issue to date, there must be ap-
plications that would require custom coding or core enhancements.
Although the back-end data models and workflows are fully customizable, the GUI is automatically
generated so the resulting applications tend to look alike. This might be seen as a plus by business
users who dislike having to learn or use multiple interfaces, but it restricts the creative freedom of
developers.

The availability of a code-free development environment that supports sophisticated enterprise applica-
tions is a significant development and is examined in more detail in the next section.

Page 8 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

As we have seen, one of the most critical areas of contention between CIOs and their business users is the long
timelines necessary to roll out and make user-requested changes to critical business applications. Becoming more
agile and responsive in this area can probably do more to enhance a CIO’s success than any other change.
In this section, we compare traditional IT project development and man hours with a code-free development plat-
form, using our decade of experience implementing EnterpriseWizard as the model for code-free development
time frames.

IT projects typically go through the phases outlined in the table below, with the nomenclature varying from com-
pany to company. The time taken depends upon the project, but the ratio of time spent in each stage is less vari-
able. So, if one week is spent detailing the user requirements, then between four and 10 weeks are typically
spent implementing them. The IT Effort column shows the typical proportion of work (not elapsed time) time spent
in each phase, whether this is in man-weeks, months, or some other unit.

Stage Activity IT Effort

Functional Requirements Define the software requirements from the user perspective. 1
Specification (FRS)
System Requirements Define the manner in which the user requirements will be implemented 1-3
Specification (SRS) within the chosen framework so as to satisfy requirements for scalability,
security, auditability, etc.
Implementation System implementation may consist of raw coding in an environment such 4-20
as .NET or SQL, or customization of an existing package, such as a CRM
system, through callbacks. For projects involving complex, traditional soft-
ware, these numbers may go much higher.
Unit Testing Test each part of the system, typically carried out by Engineering to con- 2-6
firm that it meets the SRS.
Initial Production Use Test the entire system, typically carried out by a small group of users, in a 2-6
―trial mode.‖
Note: Ideally, only small changes/fixes are required, but it is not uncom-
mon for users to find that the SRS did not meet the actual business require-
ments and the system is simply unusable in production, resulting in a new
round of spec development and implementation. The estimates in the right
column therefore represent a best-case scenario.
Production Support Support production use of the system with bug fixes, upgrades, and modi- 10-20
fications to reflect experience and changing requirements.
Notes: As detailed by The Standish Group’s ―Chaos Report,‖ approxi-
mately 25% of projects are cancelled before they reach this phase.
Decommissioning This is the time taken to transfer the business processes from an obsolete or 2-10
difficult-to-maintain system to a replacement system.
Note: The original developers have typically left the company by this time,
which can make the transfer more challenging, especially if the system
documentation has not been kept up to date.

Page 9 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

 Unless one knows exactly what the current product is doing and how it is doing 2-10
it, the application is hard to replace. This is one reason why so many COBOL
applications are still running on mainframe computers.
Totals Minimum: 22 and Maximum: 66 Man-Units

We have found that the timeline for code-free development is quite different:

Stage Activity IT Effort

Functional Require- Define the software requirements from the user perspective. 1
ments Specification
(FRS)
SRS Scalability, security, auditability, etc. are all built into the system and 1
there is rarely any code to write, so the need for a traditional SRS is
greatly reduced. However, it is still necessary to define the data model
that will provide the most intuitive user experience.
Implementation Implementation consists of configuring tables, business rules, workflows, 2
etc. using a browser. With no code to write, this takes about as long as
the FRS and SRS took to design. The need for unit testing is eliminated
because the core code has already undergone tens of millions of hours of
production use.
Initial Production Use Test the entire system, typically carried out by a small group of trial users. 2-6
Note: Since it is possible to make changes so rapidly within the code-free
environment, it might be expected that this phase would take much less
time than using a traditional methodology. However an effective trial still
requires significant man-hours, and the ability to make changes on the fly
encourages users to fine-tune and extend the system more than they
would in a traditional environment.
Production Support Support production use of the system with modifications to reflect experi- 2-6
ence and changing requirements. The time required for changes is much
less than with traditional methods because there is no code involved.
Note: Unlike traditional IT projects, no EnterpriseWizard- based develop-
ment has failed to reach production use.
Decommissioning Transfer the business processes to a replacement system. 1
Note: This figure is estimated because, to date, customers have extended,
not de-commissioned, EnterpriseWizard deployments. However, the most
serious challenge for project transfers is eliminated because the system is
self-documenting. Every data structure, business rule, and workflow is ex-
posed through the administrative interface using the browser.
Totals Minimum: 9 and Maximum: 17 Man-Units

Page 10 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

In summary, if we look at the average development time, taking the middle of each range and
assuming that the FRS phase took one man-week, we have the following comparison between the
two methodologies:

The actual time taken in each stage depends upon the size and complexity of the project, but the
overall ratios will remain about the same. In addition to reducing the time required to reach initial
production use by a factor of three, the chance of failure is effectively eliminated.

When it comes to reducing timescales and costs, there are multiple approaches. Where staff re-
sources are limited, the use of consultants or outsourcing may bring faster results. For instance, they
may enable a company to bring new business processes online more quickly than they could do
otherwise.
A 2009 Gartner CIO survey9 reported that CIOs’ top three priorities were implementing business
process improvement measures, reducing enterprise costs, and improving workforce effectiveness.
CIOs typically apply a judicious mix of resources to achieve these goals. Below, we summarize
some of the pros and cons of using internal IT resources, consultants, and outsourcing companies.

______________________________________________
9―Gartner EXP Worldwide Survey of More than 1,500 CIOs Shows IT Spending to Be Flat in
2009,‖ Gartner, January 2009, www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=855612

Page 11 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.

Resource Types

Resource Pros Cons

Internal IT Staff Tenure: IT tenures are reasonably long. As a Tenure: The longevity of enterprise systems
result, the people responsible for develop- typically exceeds that of IT staff, so extensive
ment are available to support modifications documentation must be supported for any cus-
based upon initial user experience and tom code.
changing requirements during the first few
years of production use. Flexibility: It takes a significant amount of time
to hire and train internal staff.
Reliability: IT staffers are known quantities,
with proven expertise, training certifications,
and productivity.
Specialized Con- Specialized Expertise: Contractors can pro- Cost: The costs of highly qualified contractors
tractors vide expert and time-saving advice in par- can be double or more that of regular staff.
ticular areas, particularly when they have
domain expertise that IT staff may lack. Tenure: Responsibility for maintenance of the
contractor’s work must be transferred to regu-
Flexibility: Contractors may be hired and lar employees, and this knowledge transfer is
fired at will. frequently imperfect.
Outsourcing Cost: Outsourcing companies can still provide Expertise Loss: Core expertise may be lost,
resources at a much lower rate than local IT leaving the company dependent upon a sup-
staff. The difference in pay between the U.S. plier with its own set of interests.
and offshore suppliers is diminishing, but is
expected to be significant until 2015 or See this Gartner report9 for advice about
later. avoiding specific outsourcing mistakes.
Communications: Managers are challenged by
different time zones, cultures, and languages,
as well as intermittent connections.
Tenure: The outsourcing company may re-
assign staff to a better paying client.10

Since each type of resource comes with significant pros and cons, the decision for how to mix them must depend on the
priorities of an organization and the project at hand. For instance, outsourcing a short-term project can minimize costs, but
may not be appropriate for a long-term, mission-critical project that requires ongoing maintenance.
If outsourcing is being used primarily to provide a solution or workaround to the cost and long development times re-
quired for process improvement and automation, it may become unnecessary once an adaptable and quickly implemented
BPM solution is available.

_________________________________________
9‖IT
Benchmarking and Outsourcing – Problem Avoidance‖ by Tom McClure, Carolyn LeVasseur http://
www.gartner.com/4_decision_tools/measurement/measure_it_articles/july01/mit_problem_avoidance1.html
10―The Dark Side of Outsourcing,‖ OffshoreITOutsourcing.com, http://offshoreitoutsourcing.com/documents/
outsourcing_problems.asp

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A code-free solution like EnterpriseWizard helps avoid the most common causes of a CIO’s perceived fail-
ure. Let’s re-examine the main reasons why CIOs are fired, as described by the aforementioned CIO Strat-
egy article11:
 The project never gets finished or goes too far over budget. Removing the need for custom coding
reduces the time required to develop a project by a factor of two or more. To meet your budget,
you may do the implementation yourself or let us do it on a fixed price basis, based on a mutually
agreed specification.
 Major application failure. Using EnterpriseWizard is very different from using unproven custom code
— it is a code set that has been tested for scalability, audited for security, and proven in hundreds
of enterprises worldwide. This is why we can guarantee success; none of our implementations has
ever failed.
 Non-compliance or a high-risk issue compromises the organization. Compliance support is built
into every EnterpriseWizard application. It not only shows an auditor what a defined business proc-
ess is and how the system enforces it, but how the process has been followed in any particular in-
stance. It also captures and collates data, such as who logged in, what IP address they came from,
what records they viewed, edited, etc.

Furthermore:
 User adoption is a lot easier with a system that can be rapidly adjusted based on user feedback.
 There are no code-compatibility issues with upgrades because there is no custom code.
 Business managers no longer need to agree with one another on everything six months in advance.
After all, the system can be changed using just a browser in a few hours. They are also no longer
dependent on the ―common sense‖ of programmers to deliver the system they need.
 The system is self-documenting because everything is exposed through the admin’s browser and
graphical workflow editor.
 Data integrity is automatically maintained by the system, not by custom code.
 Code maintenance accounts for 80% of the cost of the average software project. With no code to
write, there is no code to maintain. As a result, added costs, hassles, and unpredictable delays are
eliminated.
 Multiple applications can be consolidated on a single platform.

_______________________________________
11Renee Oricchio, ―Leading Reasons Why CIOs Get Fired,‖ CIO Strategy Center, www.ciostrategycenter.com/wjz/
Board/peers/leading_reasons_why_cios_get_fired/index.html

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With EnterpriseWizard, applications may be developed from
scratch or by customizing (and extending) an existing template or
application. Typical deployments of the latter usually involve one
week of consulting services or one week of training, if administrators
wish to do the work themselves. Here are some examples showing
how quickly applications can be built from the ground up, without
writing a line of code:
 In just three man-months, we developed EnterpriseWizard CRM, a robust system being used by hun-
dreds of companies worldwide, which has displaced major CRM products, such as MS CRM. See
www.enterprisewizard.com/hot-topic-media-case-study.pdf to learn more.
 In just two months, we developed a Sarbanes Oxley application for Chevron. Learn more by visiting
www.enterprisewizard.com/chevron-case-study.pdf.
 In just six weeks, we developed a system that completely replaced a highly customized Vantive im-
plementation. This included importing all the data, reproducing the data relationships, and re-
creating the business rules. Since deployment, one staffer has single-handedly extended the system
to cover problem, event, asset, and contract management without any coding or consulting services.
See www.enterprisewizard.com/carestream-case-study.pdf for details.
 In just two months, we developed a robust ITIL system. See www.enterprisewizard.com/itil.htm to
learn more.

A wide range of prebuilt EnterpriseWizard applications are available as starting points for custom appli-
cations and can typically be fully configured and deployed in a matter of weeks.
The last section showed how code-free technology reduced the time necessary to customize and deploy an
existing application by an approximate factor of 3. As the above examples illustrates, the time to build an
entirely new application is reduced by a far greater factor. For example, Microsoft CRM represents sev-
eral man-centuries of effort, yet was displaced by an EnterpriseWizard-based application that was devel-
oped in 3 months. For enterprise applications that are highly specialized, the actual time savings will there-
fore be far greater than 3 to 1.
To watch a demonstration of building an application from scratch, visit the following page at our Web site:
www.enterprisewizard.com/flash/Building-a-custom-application.html. This presentation literally walks you
through building a brand new application for managing employee travel expenses in just 25 minutes. It's a
bit boring, since it shows every mouse-click and keystroke involved. But from a technology perspective, it’s
quite interesting. After all, the resulting application includes full Web services support for both .NET and
Java, support for thousands of concurrent users, the generation of over 200,000 records per hour on a
$5,000 server, and more. In fact, it includes everything described in the ―Vendor Checklist‖ section above.
In brief, it is a true enterprise application.

So, how does our technology enable this rapid, code-free development of Web-based enterprise-class
applications? EnterpriseWizard leverages open-source technology stacks, the dynamic capabilities of J2EE,
and the availability of commodity hardware with 12-plus gigabytes of RAM. Of course, if you are the rare
customer who needs some custom scripting, it also supports standards such as JavaBeans, Perl, and Web
Services.

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You’ve never heard of us? Well, we’ve been busy. We’ve been delivering enterprise software for 18
years and began development of the adaptive EnterpriseWizard platform over twelve years ago. It
took us several man-centuries, five elapsed years, and over two million lines of J2EE code before we be-
gan to put it through its paces building solutions. The result makes sophisticated operations look easy, and
it changes the entire equation.
If you are working to improve and automate your processes, addressing issues of compliance and control,
or implementing metric based management, we can probably help. Call us at 1-888-727-2209 and we
will automate your most cumbersome process for a personalized demo.

An agile BPM solution can provide the ability to profit from new opportunities as soon as they occur or to
follow new business directives as they are formulated. With EnterpriseWizard’s code-free development
environment and pre-built applications, CIOs can empower their companies to adapt to changing needs
in hours or days, rather than months or years. The result: business managers who award their CIOs an A
for adaptability. Effective BPM means success for the CIO and the rest of the organization.

EnterpriseWizard, Inc. is the leading provider of powerful, easy-to-deploy, and cost-effective Web-
based software solutions for customer support, change management, ITIL, CRM and custom business
process management for organizations with complex products or services. Its adaptable platform has
attracted hundreds of customers, ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies, such as Chevron,
NEC, and Emerson Electric. Visit us at www.enterprisewizard.com or call us at 1-888-727-2209.

Page 15 CIO Strategies for Success © EnterpriseWizard, Inc.