By Peter Krass

According to the late, great management consultant Peter F. Drucker, wealth is created only when a customer is willing to pay for a good or service. In other words, no customers, no business. While management theories may come and go, the need for a business to create and sustain satisfied customers is as immutable and essential as our need for food and water.

All this may seem a roundabout topic for CIOs, but it’s not. The need to create customers forms the essence of a CIO’s job. It is the CIO who creates order-taking systems that serve to receive the payments of customers, CRM systems that help the enterprise track and better serve customers, and accounting systems that record and tally the orders and payments of customers.

In fact, the task of creating satisfied customers can be even more difficult for CIOs than it is for other, nontechnical executives. Because the CIO, unlike the others, must satisfy not one, but two sets of customers: internal — primarily, the business units that use IT’s services and systems—and external, what the rest of the world thinks of when it hears the word “customer.”

To help CIOs meet this vital challenge, the third issue of Smart Enterprise is dedicated to exploring the customer-focused CIO. Our lead feature explores customer-facing IT efforts at organizations including InovaHealth,GEMoney andMedicAlert. Our case study shows how StuartMcGuigan, CIO and senior VP at LibertyMutualGroup, has reorganized the IT department to better serve internal customers. In the Perspectives column, customer-service expert Claes Fornell reveals how CIOs can monitor the customer experience in a way that distinguishes information from mere data.

In fact, the staff of Smart Enterprise — a unique alliance between CMP Technology and CA—considers you, the CIO reader, to be our own valued customer. We welcome your comments and questions; please write me at the e-mail address below.

Peter Krass
Editor in Chief
editor@smartenterprisemag.com