Survey: IT experts must step up or else stay as support staff

Although Information Technology (IT) is one of the most in demand skills in the world, professionals in this particular field are struggling to establish a good career path.

Latest survey conducted by Singapore-based MIS Asia, the biggest IT magazine in the region, bared that unless IT professionals, especially the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) will insist to "win an important seat in the corporate table," there is possibility that the IT career will not be given serious importance by most companies.

Thus, CIOs or IT professionals, like programmers, technicians, will remain in their level as support staff, if they will not correct this "wrong" impression.

The survey which included six countries in Asia like the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Hong Kong revealed that majority of companies, whether big or small do not consider IT as an important tool to improve competitiveness, and profitability.

MIS Asia editor John Lui said CIO's and IT professionals must be able to convince their respective companies' decision makers that IT is also a revenue contributor, and a growth driver.

Significantly, he said the outsourcing trend has also threatened the CIOs career, while IT vendors are now starting to offer whole range of services, from providing hardware and software products, now already included support services to their clients.

Lui was in Cebu recently to speak before the Cebu-based CIO's and IT professionals, during the CIO Forum hosted by the Cebu Educational Development for Information Technology Inc. (Cedfit).

According to Lui the common problem among IT professionals is the limited budget given by companies in expanding the IT departments or IT support, and that it is seen as a "necessary evil," by most.

"CIO's today are struggling because businesses do not see IT, as something that can make corporations stay on top of the competition. When times are tough, IT budget is one of the first things to go," he said.

CIOs or the head of IT departments in the company, should be able play the corporate game well, not just focusing on fixing hardware and software platforms of the company, but also participate in the business planning and be part of a corporations' top executives.

Aside from being technical, CIOs are also urged to think as businesspersons, and develop or present plans on how to convince decision makers on the importance of IT to an organization, especially nowadays.

He mentioned that like the Human Resource (HR) division of a company in 1970s, wherein it was not as recognized as today.

Now, most companies are developing their HR departments, which include HR training, and more activities to sustain manpower pool. HR directors today in the huge firms are already part of the top executives in the corporations.

Likewise, CIOs are also told to bring IT in the same curb as HR, he said.

"CIOs should be pro-active and step-up to gain credit within their respective corporations," Lui said.