The CIO's Enterprise Versus Local Balancing Act

CIOs are dealing with consolidation and centralization of IT services and processes as their companies respond to large customers, standardize to cut costs, and compete in value networks of firms. This consolidation forces CIOs into an enterprise-local balancing act across three vectors: 1) locally relevant versus globally aligned; 2) cost-effective and standard versus fast and flexible; and 3) global process consistency versus satisfying constituents. At the request of its CIO Group, Forrester conducted case study analyses of how CIOs approach this balancing act, and this report presents a summary of those findings. We discovered that CIOs turn to improved understanding, greater predictability, and increased IT transparency to help them maintain their enterprise-local balance.