Credibility gap: The IT manager's makeover?

Managing IT isn't easy. At silicon.com we hear from, and write about, dozens of companies who have ongoing problems.

But how bad are things? According to research out this week, a large proportion of the UK's IT managers really struggle to quantify their technology assets and make ill-informed decisions regularly as a result.

Thirty-two per cent find it hard guess to the nearest 10, how many IT suppliers they deal with, while nearly half make purchasing decisions without checking existing IT assets.

Just two days ago, silicon.com reported on a study by Giga Information Group, stating that four out of 10 CEOs fail to believe anything their CIOs tell them - a classic case of technology problems leading directly to political ones.

Everyone working in IT has a tendency to feel those in the rest of the organisation don't appreciate their worth. silicon.com has campaigned to change that over the past three years. At the same time, it's up to those in charge - whether we use the terms IT director, CIO, or the more hands on IT manager moniker - to do their own PR.

Run as tight a ship as possible and bargaining power with the bosses and the rest of the company (dare we call them internal customers?) improves.

This is only common sense. And if we're to drag our image out of the gutter and into the boardroom, we have to kill those damaging stats off at the source. After all, none of us want to see headlines like: "£6bn a year wasted on IT".