Enterprise informatization is a complex system engineering. Among them, there are various technical problems that need to be mastered, broken through and applied, a large number of organization and coordination work and popularization training work brought about by dealing with various people in enterprises, difficulties and troubles brought about by irregular, imperfect and irregular enterprise management systems that need to be solved, and even obstacles and obstacles from traditional habits that need to be overcome, and so on. If the information department is attached to other departments in the enterprise (such as finance department, R&D department or marketing department, etc. ), can not meet the needs of modern enterprise information management. Therefore, enterprise informatization construction should have a long-term and independent organization. In addition to being responsible for information system development, there should also be an effective working group, which can combine enterprise system reform with information construction. It is a popular and ideal practice for large foreign enterprises to set up a leading group called "Information Committee", led by CIO, with senior leaders and other department heads as members of the Committee. Under the Committee, an information department at the same level as other business departments of the enterprise will be established to be responsible for the construction of information systems. Such an organization of the Ministry of Information is inseparable from the functions and roles undertaken by the Ministry of Information and CIO. The information department needs to obtain raw data from various business and functional departments, analyze and process them, and the final result should serve the decision-making of these departments and leaders. Therefore, the information department should not only be independent from other departments, but also have enough contact and communication channels with these departments; CIO should not only have full administrative power, but also have a good system cooperation relationship with the heads of other departments.
In an enterprise, CIO is the director who is fully responsible for information work, but it is different from the manager of pure technical information department who is only responsible for information system development and operation in the past. As a member of the top management decision-making, CIO is directly responsible to the top management decision-maker, and forms the "troika" of the organization together with the president or CEO and financial supervisor. In short, CIO is a compound figure who knows both information technology, business and management, and is in a senior administrative position. His main functions are:
(1) Participate in executive decision-making. CIO's participation in high-level decision-making has its own characteristics. It is necessary to make use of its information resources to help the top decision-makers make strategic plans for enterprise development, and seek the competitive advantage or enhance the competitive strength of enterprises by fully and effectively developing and utilizing information resources inside and outside enterprises. CIO is not only responsible for the decision-making activities within the scope of information resource management, but also must participate in discussing the overall problems of enterprise development. Therefore, CIO is required to have a comprehensive and clear understanding of all aspects that affect the survival and development of the whole enterprise.
(2) To formulate the enterprise's information policy and information activity planning. CIO should formulate or revise the information policy and information activity plan of the enterprise in time according to the needs of the enterprise development strategy, so as to realize the strategic intention of administrative management. When the business strategy of an enterprise changes, CIO should put in information technology and necessary resource conditions in time to deal with this change, so that the development and utilization strategy of information resources of an enterprise can be more coordinated with the business strategy.
(3) Manage enterprise information flow and standardize the basic standards of enterprise information management. As an expert in information management, CIO should be responsible for formulating the framework of enterprise information flow and establishing the basic standards of information management, such as data element standard, information classification and coding standard, user view standard, conceptual database standard and logical database standard. Do a good job of data reorganization and transform the disorderly data environment. The practice of enterprise informatization proves that only by developing an application system oriented to information flow based on data sets and centering on overall data planning can we gain the initiative of enterprise informatization construction.
(4) Responsible for the planning and macro management of enterprise information system construction. As the direct leader of enterprise information system construction, CIO should control and coordinate the development planning, operation management, safety management, staffing and budget of information system, and consider the hardware, software and application problems of system construction as a whole. At the same time, the representative unit deals with information system developers and technical equipment suppliers, establishes a "strategic partnership" with information technology service providers, reviews their "complete information technology solutions" according to the business and management needs of enterprises, and exercises the veto power.
(5) Provide effective information technology support for enterprise management. Management and technology are two keys to enterprise development. In today's era, management issues are relatively stable, while technical hotspots change very quickly. As an expert in information technology, CIO must pay close attention to the development and changes of information technology and analyze the influence of new technology on enterprise management and competitive strategy in order to make a quick response in time.
(6) Evaluate the return on investment of information technology. In the face of dazzling information technology, CIO must pay attention to the return on investment in information technology and seek a balance between information technology investment and enterprise management benefits. This is an important condition for a CIO to be invincible in the increasingly fierce technical competition of modern enterprises. There is no doubt about the advanced nature and usability of information technology. However, if these new technologies are introduced and implemented blindly, unilaterally or even in fashion, regardless of their payback period and cost/benefit relationship, they will put themselves in a passive position and lose their position in top management decision-making.
(7) Publicity, consultation and training. As the top person in charge of the information technology department and the information service department, at the operational level, the CIO should help the information personnel, business personnel and users in all departments of the enterprise to change their concepts and understanding, and give good feedback to their opinions, inquiries and help. At the same time, CIO is also responsible for educating and training all employees in the enterprise on the development and utilization of information resources.
(8) Information communication and organization and coordination. On the one hand, CIO is the contact between the top management decision maker and the information department. He is responsible for transmitting the strategy, intention and implementation plan of administrative management to the Information Department, and reporting the achievements, production capacity and development direction of the Information Department to the administrative management team. On the other hand, CIO should also undertake information communication and coordination among all departments, links and internal and external environments of the whole enterprise, so as to realize the cooperative operation of enterprises and the sharing of information resources.
Therefore, CIO, as a high-level decision-maker across technologies and departments, should make full use of controllable information resources inside and outside the enterprise, constantly improve the information infrastructure of the enterprise, and pay attention to coordinating the relationship between enterprise management and information technology. They must consciously choose and use information technology from the perspective of enterprise management, and promote the change of management mechanism and the adjustment and even reorganization of business structure through the full excavation and effective utilization of information resources, so as to improve the management decision-making level of enterprises and enhance their rapid response ability in the increasingly fierce competitive environment.