I led a seminar last week about how to make sure you IT systems are working for your business. It was full of great conversations and people and I like to think it contained a lot of insight. One of the questions that someone asked me was, “What size does an organization need to be to have a CIO?” My answer was immediate, “One!”

At Corporate Network Services, I realize that we are a bit biased here, but as a strategic business consultant offering corporate IT services in the Washington, DC metro area I am a firm believer that every business needs IT and that IT needs to work for that business. Far too often I walk into a new customer and see users working for IT: adapting a process to what their computer “lets” them do. This is the wrong way to work and the wrong way to think.

Having a CIO in your business – someone who understands technology and how it works is essential to making your IT work for you. That person, or group of people, that knows about your business, understands your needs and is able to bring options to the table to help you grow and better use your resources is the key to success whether you have 1 or 1,000 people in your company.

With that said, it is obviously not feasible for a 25 person business to have a dedicated high-level IT resource. That is where CNS comes in with our complete IT management solution PROSuite. We assign a vCIO (VIRTUAL CIO) to your account who is able to fill this gap for you – as a part of the program. We talk about your business goals and your plans and use IT as our toolkit to help you succeed.

Whether with CNS or some other computer software and networking services provider, if you don’t have someone in this role you missing out on something big.