As organizations accelerate their digital journeys, many business leaders are discovering that aligning IT strategy with business outcomes is easier said than done. The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) plays a critical role in making this connection and delivering business value.
In our previous blog, “Beyond operational support: Five ways the OCIO drives business value,” we explored how the OCIO is essential for turning IT strategy into measurable business value. However, implementing a successful OCIO isn’t without challenges.
In this second blog in our series, we dive deeper into how your organization can overcome common obstacles to unlock the OCIO’s true value. We will explore:
- How the OCIO helps transform IT investments into measurable business value by addressing challenges such as strategic misalignment, budget complexity, and disconnected delivery models.
- Why value-based management is essential for defining clear metrics, aligning investments with business goals, and fostering collaboration across teams.
- Practical ways to strengthen organizational agility, accountability, and sustainable growth through effective governance and value-driven practices.
Aligning investments with strategy: How the OCIO turns challenges into opportunities
Building an effective IT budget is a balancing act. On one hand, your organization must pursue ambitious digital initiatives—while embracing innovation and agility—to remain competitive. On the other hand, investments must be carefully aligned with broader strategic goals to ensure efficiency and measurable outcomes.
Compounding the challenge are unpredictable costs and rising digital complexity, including software licenses, cybersecurity threats, infrastructure upgrades, and changing regulations.
At the heart of this balancing act is the OCIO, connecting strategic vision with real-world execution and delivery. By clearly defining value and regularly tracking progress, the OCIO gives leaders the visibility and agility to make faster, better decisions.
A strategically aligned OCIO ensures every technology investment delivers clear, measurable value directly connected to your organization's most critical objectives. It’s about turning investment decisions into strategic advantages.
How can organizations ensure every IT investment is strategically justified and clearly connected to business objectives?
Delivering on investments: Four ways to navigate complexity
- Build close partnerships with IT and business teams to clearly understand organizational needs and translate insights into actionable investments.
- Establish clear, practical metrics to demonstrate the business impact of IT investments. Select a concise set of mission-linked KPIs to measure results, efficiency, quality, resilience, and financial performance—clearly linking each investment to business outcomes and ROI.
- Adopt flexible, agile budgeting methods guided by the OCIO and Value Management Office (VMO) guardrails. Allocate funding toward initiatives with the highest potential outcomes, allowing clear tracking of spending aligned with strategic objectives and measurable ROI.
- Enhance deployment effectiveness using an iterative approach by piloting new initiatives within specific business areas or selected projects, enabling precise measurement of outcomes. With clear metrics in place, the OCIO can confidently demonstrate value during budget reviews and illustrate how IT initiatives support strategic business priorities.
Achieve real outcomes with value-based management
One proven way to overcome OCIO challenges is value-based management—aligning IT initiatives directly with meaningful business outcomes such as cost savings, customer satisfaction, and faster time-to-market.
In practice, value-based management starts with close collaboration between business units to define “value.” This collaboration is integral to organizational success. By standardizing how value is defined, measured and acted upon, leaders can quickly make informed decisions aligned with objectives and outcomes. Each team must fully understand and be accountable for their goals to ensure strategic alignment across the organization.
Continuously tracking performance using clear, practical metrics ensures organizational success. Teams should be empowered to correct course, or even stop, if desired outcomes are not delivered. Managing different project methodologies (Waterfall, Agile, and product-centric) also requires careful attention from the OCIO to ensure you achieve the right outcome.
Organizations that effectively integrate value-based management don't just navigate change—they harness it as a catalyst for growth. By embedding this organizational shift, they transform strategic vision into sustainable, measurable outcomes, particularly in the realms of digital transformation and AI strategy.
Six ways to build an effective value management framework
| 1. | Create a shared vision and common definition of value: Clearly align strategic goals with daily operations using language that resonates with IT, business, and finance teams. |
| 2. | Empower centralized ownership and strengthen leadership commitment: Designate the OCIO or VMO as the value management owner with defined guardrails and decision rights. Align roles, funding, and priorities by securing active commitment from senior leaders, including the CIO, CFO, CAO, Chief Architect, and key business executives. |
| 3. | Establish clear, outcome-focused metrics: Use simple, measurable indicators to clearly track whether projects are delivering value. Cascade strategic objectives and results into a small, stable set of KPIs. Maintain a single, standardized glossary across the OCIO to help keep everyone aligned. |
| 4. | Embrace collaboration across teams: Engage stakeholders early to ensure transparency, alignment, and shared accountability. Involve all necessary teams—including product management, engineering, finance, and security—in decisions about starting, stopping, or scaling initiatives. |
| 5. | Leverage easy-to-use tools: Use straightforward dashboards, templates and scoring methods to simplify tracking and decision-making. Automate processes wherever possible. AI-enabled dashboards can unify portfolio, finance, and operational data, without creating additional reporting burdens. |
| 6. | Encourage out-of-the-box thinking: Enable teams to move beyond budgets and deadlines by connecting their work directly to meaningful business outcomes. Foster a culture of experimentation, adaptation, and continuous improvement. |
Below are key factors to help define and measure whether your strategy is delivering true value.
Key value dimensions to consider
- Value-based management should address multiple dimensions of value, including:
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- Business value and alignment with the corporate strategy
- Internal non-financial value
- Financial value
- External non-financial value
- Technological value and alignment with the IT strategy
- Business value and alignment with the corporate strategy:
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- Innovation
- Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
- Customer knowledge and insights
- Risk management and compliance
- Operational efficiency
- Customer journey and experience
- Competitive advantage
- Internal non-financial value:
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- Organizational agility
- Employee experience
- Employee engagement
- Talent retention
- Enhanced collaboration
- Skill development
- Financial value:
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- Profitability
- ROI
- Full-time equivalent (FTE) optimization
- Revenue growth
- Cost reduction
- Market share
- OPEX reduction
- Fixed cost flexibility
- External non-financial value:
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- Client positioning
- Market attractiveness
- Risks of inaction
- Brand image and reputation
- Customer satisfaction
- Product and service quality
- Technological value and alignment with the IT strategy:
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- Maintainability
- System robustness
- Data management
- Cybersecurity
- Methodology and best practices
- Time to market
- Obsolescence management and modernization
Practical tips for organizational success
Strengthen your organization’s strategic agility, alignment, and results with these OCIO principles.
- Simplify governance: Maintain flexibility without unnecessary complexity. Focus on outcomes rather than deliverables.
- Break down silos: Organize teams around value streams or workstreams to promote concise, ongoing collaboration across your organization.
- Encourage experimentation: Foster innovation and create opportunities for teams to explore new ideas and solutions.
- Develop product leaders: Invest in skilled agile transformation experts and product managers to boost your team’s capabilities.
- Ensure strategic business alignment: Keep product owners closely connected to business teams, ensuring solutions directly address real business needs.
- Facilitate change: Provide practical training, clear communication and structured guidance to help teams transition smoothly to multi-modal practices.
OCIO success stories
How do OCIOs function in real life? These examples illustrate that with the right OCIO structure and mindset, organizations can transform challenges into measurable results.
- We partnered with a global cosmetics leader in driving its IT transformation by aligning technology strategy with business priorities, implementing performance governance, and fostering a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing. The outcome? A stronger IT foundation enabling agility, innovation, and sustainable growth.
- A large U.S. federal health agency maximized its strategic investments by transforming its traditional Project Management Office (PMO) into a VMO—linking IT initiatives directly to critical mission objectives and delivering clear, measurable outcomes.
From challenges to competitive edge
Every organization faces challenges in connecting strategy to execution. The OCIO bridges that gap. By embracing value-based management and effective governance, your OCIO can pave the way for smarter decisions, stronger outcomes, and a lasting competitive advantage.
Ultimately, the OCIO bridges the gap between your strategic objectives and their effective execution—ensuring investments directly support organizational goals and priorities.
We help OCIOs worldwide unlock their full strategic value. Connect with us—Lara Ozanne and Teri Musick—to learn more about how your OCIO can become a powerful strategic engine for success.
We invite you to learn more about how OCIOs can drive innovation and value for your organization:
- Beyond operational support: Five ways the OCIO drives business value
About these authors
Lara Ozanne
Director Business Consulting - France
Lara co-leads CGI’s CIO Advisory and Digital Leadership business consulting service. She also drives the development of IT consulting practices and business solutions for CGI’s Financial Services sector in Paris.
Teri Musick
Director Consulting Expert – CGI Federal
With over 25 years of leadership experience in the IT and telecommunications industries and extensive tenure supporting the federal government sector, Teri Musick is a leader in emerging technologies, AI business strategy, value management, and modern software development.
