By Alan Joch

In a quest to serve the enterprise, IT departments have always struggled with their organizations' business units for common ground. But a growing number of companies have come up with a powerful way to resolve this issue. They're putting their CIOs on their boards of directors, giving these IT executives close access to the enterprise's most strategic decisions.

That's certainly the case in France. There, CIOs at nearly 70 percent of companies sit on their boards of directors, finds a recent survey conducted by Vanson Bourne, a market research company. That's the highest level anywhere in Europe, the survey found; on average, European CIOs sit on the boards at only half of all companies.

Some in the industry say the motives are purely practical: Regular input from senior IT managers leads to better business decisions on the part of nontechnical executives — and vice versa. "We have a bottom-up and top-down flow of information about what systems people need to do their jobs better," says Laurent Allard, CIO of Logica plc, a U.K.-based IT and business service provider.

In fact, CIO Allard reports directly to Logica's CEO of global operations. He says the high-level positioning allows him to "better articulate how IT solutions align with the company's business strategies." After all, he adds, "You are closer to the definition of those strategies."

Board-level participation of French CIOs isn't consistent across all industries, however. Philippe Compagnion, an executive recruiter with Paris-based Egon Zehnder International, says board-member CIOs are most common at French retail banking, insurance and telecommunications companies, followed closely by corporate and investment banking firms. The reason: It's in these industries that French executives consider IT most integral to the development and delivery of products and services.

A generational shift is also making a difference. In France, many CIOs have professional experience that includes not only IT, but also other disciplines, thanks to stints as divisional or product-line managers. "The new generation of CIOs in France has a profile in financial management," says Alain Ptrissans, Associate VP of Consulting at IDC France. "They're not pure technical and IT specialists."

Richard Valenti, CIO of Generali France, agrees, but cautions his fellow CIOs to use their access to business leaders wisely. As the IT leader of a subsidiary of the Italian company Generali Group, Valenti frequently presents to the corporation's president and management committee. "IT people need the support of the board, but to get that support, they must explain in plain language what they are doing," Valenti says. "Years ago, people spoke about IT being like a tribe with its own language. Companies today accept that separation less and less."

Logica's Allard says plain speaking can be influential for both big transformation projects and in more subtle ways. When Allard joined Logica late last year, top managers were cutting costs to weather the recession. At one board meeting, some managers wanted to cut spending on Allard's plan to expand customer relationship management (CRM) systems. But Allard, able to speak in terms the business leaders could understand, was able to push through his vision. That's an approach that can extend to CIOs anywhere in the world.

ALAN JOCH is a business and technology writer.