"How technical are you?" This common challenge can turn into a sore spot for the CIO today. It's inevitable (and actually desirable), you see: as you move up to executive rank, you lose your day-to-day involvement in the actual nuts-and-bolts implementation of technical details. Many executives respond by essentially abandoning all direct personal engagement with technology. But to do so across the board is a mistake. 

We all see favorite projects of CEOs and other CXOs faltering after a great pomp and show. They take away a lot of energy, budgets and resources to see through to fruition though rarely anyone wants to challenge the need or the relevance at that time. The emperor's new clothes will always be a parable with learning for everyone. 

For CIOs, process is often seen as an impediment to quicker delivery! So, does that mean that the IT function needs to focus only on delivery and not processes? The answer is a definitive No! The way to address this is to successfully synergize between processes and delivery by creating and implementing best practices in project management that are repeatable processes and become second nature to the Project Manager. 

I think it is critical for IT to have very high quality project management skills, tools and experiences. If you don't have these skills in your shop, you need to find and grow them. If you do have the skills, nurture them and thank them for all they do. 

Unless, there is an increase in the use of Hospital Information System, Electronic Medical Record (EMR) will only remain a dream. When I joined Medanta Medicity, it was in the project stage. We chose a staggered approach of building the IT infrastructure of the hospital. Then we put a strategy around to help doctors use IT.  

A company must use a document management system to remain competitive. Paper is the largest 'database' within a company and the most difficult to access. Therefore, an EDM solution is necessary to manage and access information held in paper form. But an EDM is not going to automatically take your operation to the next level. Only f you use the tool correctly you will see strong incremental improvements that will cut cost and speed decision making. 

Since an SLA is the key to relationship between the customer and the service provider, each SLA objective should be carefully measured, analysed and negotiated before being finally closed as an agreement. SLAs should be SMART - Simple, Measureable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-bound. 

Frequently risk conversations in the enterprise is limited to just the financial risk around the financial systems and their control. I'm now thinking the risks in other areas like securing the intellectual property of the company and assuring business continuity due to events affecting the supply chain are likely the bigger risks. 

The focus of knowledge management should be the management of tacit knowledge that is unstructured and hidden in the minds of the people (employees). The capture of tacit knowledge is like writing a story or a poem for which making a process can be difficult if not impossible.Hence, a semi-structured or unstructured process is required to capture it.  

To me, data has always been something that I've used to do my job. Data is something that I've used to help inform myself, my teams, my organizations and my clients. In my world, data has always been the building block of services and platforms but data isn't driving me, my business or my teams. Data is the base level of the business. Data is the business in its rawest form but it is also meaningless without context and meaning.