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The Enterprise Connect Awards 2004 questionnaire was built around a framework. The process of creating this framework took over a month-the rough outline was sent to a few leading enterprise CIOs and their inputs were sought to make the final schema, which comprised the following:

• Leadership, vision and mission (including risk-taking ability)
• Strategic deployment of IT
• Business benefits and value
• Pioneering use of technology
• Innovative use of technology
• Process improvements
• Internal and external customer orientation (understanding business needs)
• People orientation

Once the framework was finalized, the questionnaire was framed. The questionnaire was split into three sections, with each section asking for specific information like general information about the company and CIO, IT and business alignment, and IT projects of excellence.

IT and Business Alignment
The second section of the questionnaire dealt with IT and business alignment. This set of questions sought to understand: a CIO's understanding of critical business processes; impact of IT on functional areas; process/mechanism to measure the impact of IT; the importance of IT within the organization through the department structure and its hierarchy; the ability of the CIO to influence users and decision makers; whether IT is aligned with the organization's business goals; and whether business critical information is provided to senior management.

This was further broken down into a set of seven questions, with its assigned value totaling 100 marks. The scoring pattern took objective/subjective turns, depending on the nature of the questions.

The Categories
The categories were meant to seek an understanding of the different roles played by CIOs within their respective organizations, the constraints and risks they faced and took in the course of fulfilling these roles, how they overcame difficulties and what business benefits were derived at the end of it. The categories are:

That of a Pioneer (wherein he has adopted cutting edge/ emerging technologies ahead of time)

That of an Innovator (wherein he has innovated an existing technology/application for use it was originally not intended for)

That of an Advocate (wherein he has contributed towards acceptance of IT within the organization-top management and end users)

That of an Extended Manager (wherein he has created value for the business by connecting strategic external stakeholders)

That of Process discipline (wherein he has positively impacted business processes through successful use of IT)

Under each category, there was a set of five questions. Each category was assigned a value of 20 marks, with a total 100,
the scoring pattern being primarily subjective.

The Mid-sized and the Large
In order to enable an equitable playing field, the participants were divided into two camps-those with a turnover of over Rs 1000 crore and those who fell below that. The jury decided to award a Champion CIO and 2 runners-up (Gold and Silver Award) under each category.

The one who scored highest out a total of 200 would be the Champion CIO.

It was also decided to award companies in the individual categories based on their scores. For these awards, all companies were clubbed together.

The Shortlist
Over 60 companies sent in their filled responses. The CIOL and Dataquest Research Team shortlisted about 40 companies in Round 1, while Round 2 saw the list shrink to 26 companies. This was further whittled down to a roster of 20 companies, based on scores in the overall and individual categories, which was given to the jury, along with a detailed summary of each shortlisted company.

The Process
The shortlist prepared by CIOL and Dataquest was put through the Enterprise Connect Awards Framework during the selection process. The eight categories in the framework were assigned 10 marks each for the jury to score. Based on the summaries prepared for the six shortlisted, jury members rated the individual CIOs on the eight criteria in the schema.

The jury's scores were totaled, and the highest was awarded the title of Champion CIO, with two runner-up awards-Gold and Silver-following. The same methodology was followed for the under Rs 1,000 crore turnover category.

For the individual categories, the jury made its assessments based on leadership, vision and risk-taking ability, strategic deployment of IT, business benefits and value, besides the nature of work in that category. Of these, the first three qualities were deemed mandatory requirements, and the companies with the highest total in each category were given the awards.

The Jury
The jury panel for the CIOL Enterprise Connect Awards 2004 was chaired by Ashok Soota, chairman and CEO, MindTree Consulting. The jury panel comprised Prof. S Bhatnagar of IIM, Ahmedabad, and D Ashok, consultant, Ibrahim Ahmed, editor of Dataquest and Voice&Data, and Shyam Malhotra, editor-in-chief of CyberMedia Publications

The jury decided to first score all the companies in the over Rs 1,000 crore category, and grade them based on the collective score, raising queries and questions depending on parameters like the nature of business, business vertical, history of IT usage, and so on.

It was a conscious decision by both the organizers (CIOL and Dataquest) and the jury to not confer two awards on any one organization. As a result, the jury decided to de-classify companies which had already won an award, and to award, instead, the closest contender.

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