#AfricaCloudSummit: Vimal Shah explains What CEO’s expect from CIO’s

Vimal Shah, the CEO of Bidco, which was among the first FMCG firms to invest heavily in technology, took the stage at the inaugural Africa Cloud Summit to give his point of view on what CEOs expect from CIOs.

Vimal Shah presented his points during a Fireside Chat conducted by CIO East Africa CEO Harry Hare, who posed several questions reflecting the topic: CEO View of the Cloud.

CIO East Africa: What do you expect from your CIO?

Vimal: I expect that they are always in touch with what is happening in the world. They are advisors to the organization in all aspects of how IT can be used, plus getting to know what is happening in the world and then filtering it out for the company, in terms of what is in it for the company and how does the company benefit. A CIO needs to tell us what this means to us, what this doesn’t mean to us, and then filter it out to say these are the benefits and this is what we will get out of it.

CIO East Africa: That sounds like a strategic role you expect from the CIO so does that mean that he/she answer to you or answers to someone else?

Vimal: in my position, they would answer straight to me, and I think it is important that you have a balance on that. I think the person needs to understand the business first, what is our business model and really what is our KPI in terms of business, Based on that, you find solutions that are going to take us where we want to go. I don’t expect them to be techies. Things have changed we don’t need techies; we need people who have business solutions.

CIO East Africa: Are you comfortable saying that the time is now that the CIO needs a seat on the board?

Vimal: I guess so, but the point is that a seat on the board is not important. To say he has got a seat on the board and you’ve got seven other board members who are all nine IT guys and they run him down, you will have a voting problem; one out of seven. I think what the CIO has to do is to ensure the entire organization, across the board, has a CIO mentality or an IT mentality.

CIO East Africa: You sit on various boards, you are also in the private sector alliance; so, you speak to a lot of CEOs, what is the biggest inhibition to the use of technology as a strategic business system?

Vimal: there are different types of CEO’s; there is the old school; who are saying I don’t have a computer and his PA does everything, the other type are the ones who are saying I do my private emails on my servers, there are other guys who want to see hardware and there are the government types who say we have a project and the project needs a huge amount of procurement, where they buy hardware and software solutions and after two years its obsolete, cut all that, go into SaaS and IaaS this is where the concept needs to change, and we are changing.

CIO East Africa: So how do you use IT yourself?

Vimal: I have my own phone; I have my own computer; I have my own iPad; I run my own meetings; I run my own appointments. It’s all done online, and all done through the system and everyone is collaborating through the system, where we have a partnership with Microsoft.

The Africa Cloud Summit, held at Nairobi’s Radisson Blu, runs through 16 March. For more information, visit http://www.africacloudsummit.com