So if you look back on the day that you become a CIO, you need to  remember that nobody ever told you that this was going to be an easy job  dealing with the importance of information technology. 

One of the  reasons that being the person in the CIO position is such a tough job is  because of all of the important decisions that you are expected to make.  The impact of your decisions will affect the lives of everyone who  works in your department and may impact the company for years to come.  There is a lot riding on what you decide to do. Feeling any pressure  yet? 

What are the biggest decisions that CIOs are expected to make and  what are the best way to make these decisions?

Guess what? 

The person with the CIO job has another question about the  importance of information technology that they are going to have to find  the answer to. This time around the question is just exactly  how we can go about securing all of the so-called “smart” devices that  are going to be constantly connecting to the internet and sharing data. 

As the internet of things starts to take off, the security questions need to be answered right now.

Let’s face it, if you were the person running your company you would  have a lot of big issues that you needed to deal with in addition to  worrying about the importance of information technology. 

One of these  issues would be the simple fact that your health-care costs for employees are ballooning.  Since we now live in the 21st Century, you’d probably look for a  high-tech way to get your hands around this problem. You could give your  employees activity trackers and introduce high-tech wellness programs that keep track of employee’s exercise, sleep, and nutrition. 

However, by doing this you are going to create a bunch of privacy issues that the CIO is going to have to find a way to deal with.

Wow – that cloud thing is a powerful tool for the person with the CIO  job to use. 

Think about it, we have access to almost unlimited storage  and the ability to spin up new servers anytime that we run into the  need. Life sure has gotten better than it used to be. However, it turns  out that moving to the cloud comes with its own special set of  downsides. 

What can happen is that after we’ve moved our corporate data  to the cloud, we may have ended up leaving it exposed for the world to see.

That pesky e-commerce thing has changed everything for businesses everywhere. 

What this means for  the person with the CIO job is that they need to help the company find  ways to use the importance of information technology to do things  quicker and better. One way that the person with the CIO job is trying  to help out is by taking the robots that have become an indispensable  part of almost every warehouse and move them into retail settings. 

Will robots be the way that CIOs make retail better?

Just exactly how important is a CIO? 

A startup health care company tried  to accomplish the creation of a new way for patients to purchase  prescriptions online; however, they quickly ran into problems and failed. This time around they understand that things have to be different. 

This time around they’re hiring a CIO to help them do it correctly.

CIOs who are excited about their jobs and who are ambitious often like to act like they know everything.  

This kind of behavior becomes very visible to everyone that they work  with. As they move on in their career, these CIOs often start to realize  that, despite the importance of information technology, just how little  they actually did know. Acting this way can be a severe career limiter  for CIOs. 

What we need to do is to understand what it looks like when we  are acting like a know-it-all and what we can do to stop this kind of  behavior.

One does not often think about farming and CIOs in the same thought.  

However, it turns out that the way that food is being grown and  harvested is in the process of undergoing a radical transformation. Technology is being applied to the fields where our food is grown and how best to apply that technology is something that CIOs are being asked to determine. 

What this means for the average CIO is that they’ve got some learning to do about how food gets from the field to our tables.

So it turns out that restaurants have CIOs also. 

These CIOs are tasked  with the challenge of understanding the importance of information  technology and finding ways to use IT resources to make the restaurants that they work for even better than they already are. 

In order to make this happen, restaurants are going to have to collect a great deal of data about their customers and then use big data  techniques to turn that data into knowledge that the restaurant can take  action on.

CIOs who work for grocery store chains are undergoing some significant  changes in their lives. 

It used to be that being a CIO who worked in the  grocery business allowed you to focus on such issues as the delivery of  items to stores, current inventory levels, and the tracking of food  shipments when a contamination was detected. However, that has all been  changed. Every year in the U.S. consumers spend over US$800B on grocery  store food. More and more of that spending is starting to go online.  

Grocery store CIOs need to understand the importance of information  technology and adapt to this change or risk being left behind.