Catching Up With The CIO

Among other measures, in the last year MinuteClinic has implemented e-prescribing, the use of an automated data entry system to generate a prescription; converted medical record communications to a new industry standard to more efficiently facilitate the exchange of patient information between locations; and implemented improvements in insurance verification procedures to make them more automated and virtually instantaneous.

Keeping the House in Order

Some of the most pressing concerns shared by CIOs are the same ones that can plague a manager in any department: finding and keeping the right staff, keeping expenses down, and knowing when to outsource and when to keep critical tasks in-house.

“I think the staff issue will continue to be a challenge, especially with the declining enrollment in information systems collegiate programs,” says Kate McNulty, senior vice president and CIO for Marshall-based Schwan Food Company. “At times, this can be extremely challenging for a company based in a rural community, where it takes the right individual to focus on quality-of-life changes.”

Partly because the market is still glutted with graduates from the late ’90s tech boom, college students are turning away from computer science programs and other IT-related educational tracks in greater and greater numbers, according to recent numbers from the University of California Los Angeles’ Higher Education Research Institute. That means recruiting and keeping people is much trickier now than it was a decade ago.

Sihilling also says that a particular challenge is to find staff that will support the older platforms that he has. He adds that Nash Finch sometimes uses remotely located programmers for that purpose.

“There is a growing skill shortage in many areas of IT these days, so retention and continued training of employees is given a high priority,” Brady says. “Beyond traditional recruiting, emphasis is placed on attracting promising entry-level employees, and looking beyond traditional IT roles to broader business backgrounds to fill the need for experience.”

“We are routinely conducting market analysis to ensure our salaries and benefits are competitive,” Sunquist says. “Also, it is difficult to retain staff who become certified in certain applications because they get recruited by consulting companies for much higher salaries.”

According to technology research firm DataMonitor in London, IT budgets grew for the first time in years in 2006, and were due to do so again in 2007. But some of that increase may be due to pent-up need for upgrades and maintenance. CIOs aren’t necessarily feeling flush.