The current economic slowdown has generated many stories about how companies are coping with higher prices and retrenching consumers.
A tech luncheon at the Milleridge Cottage in Jericho Tuesday afternoon took a different tack. It focused on how chief information officers at major Long Island corporations are weathering the slowdown.
The CIOs said that, more than ever, they have an eye on the bottom line.
“In a slow economy there is less money to spend on new investments and initiatives,” said Bill Taub, vice president of Global IT Security at software developer CA Inc., the Islandia-based business software maker.
Taub and six other panelists spoke at the annual CIO luncheon of the Association of Information Technology Professionals/Long Island chapter.
Because of cutbacks, “there is much more of a conversation around investments and tangible returns,” Taub said. “I better make those numbers and those benefits better be real.”
Charles Bonomo, a vice president and chief information officer at MSC Industrial Direct, a tool distributor in Melville, said that the slowing economy has broadened IT’s role to include making a company more competitive.
“The days of IT providing [just] technology to an organization are long gone,” Bonomo said. “What we need to provide is competitive advantage.” Those advantages include making use of the latest technologies to help customers manage inventories or order products more easily from MSC than from competitors.
“If you’re not creating competitive advantages for your company,” Bonomo said, “you might as well be outsourced.”
--Carrie Mason-Draffen