You’ve come a long way, CIO.

From the technical systems department up through the ranks to the executive boardrooms, the chief information officer has evolved into a key partner in the strategic decision-making process.

Now, a major conference coming to Calgary is drawing top executives from across Canada and internationally to discuss how important it is to build a “connected organization” — how technology and businesses are bridging to create new opportunities in a highly-competitive environment.

“This is a business technology conference, not a technology business conference. It’s a huge difference,” says Barry Clavir, executive producer of the CIO Summit West, to be held in Calgary April 23-24. “Building a connected organization is not a technology theme, it’s a business issue.”

Keynote speakers will include top executives from a variety of sectors — and not just CIOs, says Clavir, adding a CIO is really any person responsible for the strategic direction of the technology aspect of a business.

“No business today of any size can make any business decision without thinking about the IT impact it will have,” he says. “In many businesses, their whole competitive advantage is based on their IT structure.”

This is the first time the CIO Summit, a national conference held in Toronto each fall, is being mounted in Calgary, and Clavir hopes the western edition will become an annual affair.

“In our view, Calgary is the hub of the business technology market in western Canada,” he says. “The economics of being in Calgary made a lot of sense by virtue of the amount of head offices and large enterprises here . . . it was a logical place we would go. It’s our first venture outside of the Toronto market.”

Keynote speakers at the conference include Des Harrold, head of Corporate Account Management at Siemens AG in Dublin, Ireland, Garry Rasmussen, president and CEO of TELUS Enterprise Solutions Inc., Andrew Harries, senior VP of corporate development with Sierra Wireless Inc., and Doug Walker, president and COO of Calgary-based online travel services provider Tripeze.com

“The big challenge on the technology side . . . is you’ve really got to make sure anything technically you’re doing is driven towards what has the greatest commercial return,” observes Walker.

“That’s one of the exciting things we’ve seen happen within Tripeze — we’ve had the tougher times financially, but it’s neat to see how the team has responded and has found creative ways of doing things and recognizing there always has to be a bottom line. What will make it more likely to entice the customer to buy? Or what will make the site or business compelling enough to make other businesses want to partner up with you?”

Ted Barnicoat, chief information officer for Calgary trucking carrier Trimac Corporation, says today’s CIO must deal with both policy and strategy.

“The CIO isn’t there to manage the operation, they are there to help define a strategy by which a corporation is going to use technology as an advantage,” he says. “As you get into changes of organization structure as a result of things like e-commerce, these require a lot of soul-searching at the executive committee level. You need somebody there who can speak on a peer-to-peer basis on the impacts of some of this stuff.”

A recent survey by RHI Consulting of more than 1,400 CIOs in the United States showed they are increasingly moving from developing systems to developing strategy. CIOs reported being more involved in other departments, as well as playing a greater role in the organization’s bottom-line results.

“While technical expertise remains fundamental to a technology executive’s job, well-developed ‘soft’ skills and a solid background in finance and marketing are increasingly valuable,” said Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of RHI consulting, a California-based technology staffing company.

Clavir agrees. “You must have the business skills as well as the technical skills,” he insists. “We’re finding that more and more CIOs have not come out of the technology side, they’ve come out of the business. In some cases, depending on the industry, it’s more important to know the business than it is to know the technology.”

The two-day Calgary conference will focus on several issues, including how a business can overcome barriers in building connections between individuals, businesses and other countries, and how technology startups can compete with, and even benefit from, the presence of established industry giants.

“Technology should really be viewed as an investment, and the return you get on it,” says Clavir, “and not just an expense.”

Web Watch:

www.ciosummit.com/