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Build a Regular CEO IT Update Package

Be prepared for your most important meetings with your most important stakeholder.

CIO updates to the CEO are often ineffective due to:

  • Lack of a rigorous plan for how to deliver updates to the CEO.
  • Poor understanding of CEO expectations.
  • Inconsistent reporting and communication style, leading to gaps in understanding and alignment.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • The best report can be tailored when the CIO is aware of the CEO’s expectations with a minimal alignment gap.
  • Focus on the crucial initiatives and use the proper metrics to ensure that you meet your CEO’s expectations.
  • Don’t start from scratch: the PowerPoint deck should be a living document that is easy to customize for every update meeting with the CEO.
  • The report itself is only half of the story. How it is delivered verbally also plays a substantial part.

Impact and Result

When you complete this project, you will have:

  • A better understanding of your relationship with your CEO and their expectations.
  • A living communication document made with a template to assist in better presenting to your CEO.
  • A defined guideline on how to deliver a captivating presentation to achieve your desired objectives.

Build a Regular CEO IT Update Package Research & Tools

1. Build a Regular CEO Update Package Storyboard – A step-by-step guide to build and communicate an update document that reduces the effort required for the most important meeting with your CEO.

This blueprint consists of four sections: understanding expectations of your CEO, identifying key metrics to report, customizing the update package template, and delivering an appealing presentation.

2. CEO Update Package Presentation Template – An easy-to-customize template to help you build an effortlessly made impressive CEO update reports.

This template provides a framework to build your own CEO update package presentation. It covers strategic updates, foundational updates, and transformational updates.


Build a Regular CEO IT Update Package

Be prepared for regular meetings with your most important stakeholder.

Analyst Perspective

Improve alignment and excel at communicating with your most important stakeholder: the CEO.

Cem Sezen

In the last decade, chief information officers (CIOs) have witnessed a tremendous paradigm shift and begun to adopt a more transformational position, leading the digital strategy in their organizations. As a result of this change, their direct senior has shifted from chief financial or operations officer (CFO or COO) to the highest c-suite leader, the CEO, as CIOs become more involved with the external capabilities of their organizations.

Today, IT is no longer seen as a cost center but rather an enabler of business strategy, stimulating innovation and providing tools and infrastructure to take the business further. Given the position of technology in today's business world, it is unsurprising that almost half of CIOs globally now report directly to CEOs.

As a result, the way CIOs handle their reporting has evolved from a simple department update to an initiative-focused and future-oriented complete package. That’s why having a premade, easy-to-customize living document will ensure you stay prepared to deliver the best communication deck that covers your CEO’s expectations.

Cem Sezen

Research Specialist
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

  • Most CIOs lack a rigorous plan for how they will update their CEOs during their recurring meetings.
  • A limited understanding of CEO expectations often results in miscommunications and missed opportunities.
  • Inconsistent reporting and communication style leads to gaps in understanding and poor alignment between the CEO and the CIO.

Common Obstacles

  • Misalignment of expectations between the CEO and the CIO
  • Limited time to produce and communicate important information
  • Lack of presentation skills, limiting the ability to grab the CEO’s attention
  • Content that fails to show IT alignment with business goals

Info-Tech’s Approach

  • Assess your alignment with your CEO and meet expectations without a miss.
  • Effortlessly create impressive CEO update reports and save time using Info-Tech’s customizable premade template. Instead of worrying about the format or the design, CIOs should focus on content and well-selected information.
  • CIOs who follow our blueprint will have a report that is easy to customize, allowing them to periodically produce engaging, concise, and compelling content ensuring the job is done efficiently and effectively.

Info-Tech Insight

Build your presentation to focus on understanding priorities, improving alignment and confidence with your CEO. As you improve alignment and confidence, your presentation focus areas should evolve to reflect the moving targets and priorities of the CEO and the organization.

Your Challenge

This research is designed to help CIOs who struggle to build and communicate a CEO update report.

  • When it comes to understanding business goals, most CIOs and CXOs* think that there is room for improvement, indicating a discrepancy in understanding each other's expectations and perspectives.
  • Limited understanding of the department's position regarding business goals and failure to assess the key metrics to track performance are the gatekeepers for producing and communicating successful reports.
  • Selecting spot-on metrics to demonstrate the performance of the department plays a crucial role in the success of reports. Both CIOs and CXOs believe there is room for improvement for how IT success is measured.

Examples of CXO include CEO, COO, CFO, CTO

CIOs and CXOs agree there is room for improvement

About half of CXOs think some improvement is necessary for understanding business goals

51% of CXOs and 52% of CIOs think some improvements are necessary.

Half of all CXOs think some improvement is necessary for measuring IT project success

50% of CXOs and 47% of CIOs think some improvements are necessary for measuring IT success.

Source: Info-Tech CEO-CIO Alignment Benchmark Report 2020-2023, n=339

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

  • Poor communication between business and IT is the second-highest rated barrier to innovation for both CIOs and CXOs.
  • Misaligned priorities and contrasting perspectives prevent healthy communication.
  • Failing to ensure that IT initiatives are tightly aligned with the organization’s business strategy and goals can lead to loss of confidence.
  • Limited meeting time accompanied by ad hoc and irregular meeting frequency results in inconsistent communication.
  • Lack of skills and time to produce compelling and concise presentations force the CIO to rely on verbal reporting.

Poor communication is considered a barrier to innovation

Poor communication between business and IT is considered a barrier to innovation.

Source: Info-Tech CEO-CIO Alignment Benchmark Report 2020-2023, n=339

Be prepared for your most important meetings with your most important stakeholder.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Talk to an Analyst

Our analyst calls are focused on helping our members use the research we produce, and our experts will guide you to successful project completion.

Book an Analyst Call on This Topic

You can start as early as tomorrow morning. Our analysts will explain the process during your first call.

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Each call will focus on explaining the material and helping you to plan your project, interpret and analyze the results of each project step, and set the direction for your next project step.

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Author

Cem Sezen

Contributors

  • Will Stevens, CTO, Aptum
  • AB Dosil, CTO, BC Energy Regulator
  • Raj Khalahasti, CTO, BRP Group
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