A CIO's top three targets to fund critical projects are the CEO's checkbook, external partners and other departments' budgets. The biggest difference between the most successful CIOs and others is their passion for linking IT to business value. W ith the right vision, the right people and the right technology, money becomes the cornerstone of any enterprise, the piece that finishes the puzzle. A big chunk of any CIO's budget is people costs. An outside vendor can maintain legacy systems or augment employees' existing skills to help make fixed IS costs variable.
Many companies staff up for a specific project by outsourcing temporarily.
Others go further, permanently outsourcing all or most of their developers. Agway Inc., for example, a commercial farming supply chain headquartered in Syracuse, N.Y., outsources all of its developers to minimize overhead. Under this system, each Agway business unit's IS manager is responsible for working with the outsourcer to procure the necessary resources to get IT projects done. By doing so, they ensure that the vendor has employees with the proper skills and that their former employees have jobs. Companies also manage fixed IT costs is by organizing them internally so that divisions and departments feel the pressures of a competitive market.