Ask a CIO
David Gee
Transformation & Digital CIO
David is a well known Transformation & Digital CIO, he consults as an CXO Advisor in Financial Services.
With 18 years as a CIO, David has deep experience in digital change. At CUA he successfully led a major transformation of all systems and technology, this culminated in him winning CIO of the Year in 2014 for Financial Services.
He is heavily embedded in the Fintech startup ecosystem as an Advisor to Sapien Ventures, Tyro Fintech Hub, Venturetec Accelerator and also advises a number of startups.
David is a popular writer for a number of IT publications including CIO, Computerworld and CSO.
Should critical organisational business data, have a material dollar value and be itemised as a business asset on a balance sheet?
In the ideal world, it would be good to do this. Let's just step into this scenario for a moment.
By having critical organisational business data having a tangible dollar value, we would be treating this with the appropriate respect from a privacy, PCI and other competitive values.
Let's assume that Paul's name and address details as a long standing customer were valued at $100. Paul is valued this way, because he holds 4 products with our company and is slightly above the average of 3.5 products.
We treat Paul better, and hence we treat his data with greater respect. In theory this works, but we have to treat all information with the same care.
My CFO friends would argue that if we did this this, then this value would be dynamic and change with risk factors such as age, accounts payable status, complaints.
It's an fascinating question and perhaps one that a CIO shouldn't answer.
For every CIO, I would like to see my peers all treat information as a critical organisational asset. This is what is in reality is for most enterprises. To actually have a $ value as a proxy is a fascinating idea but in practice a tad too hard to execute.
- David Gee, Transformation & Digital CIO