By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Grand Rapids-based information technolgy solutions firm Open Systems Technologies, one of this year’s West Michigan’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies To Work For, has diversified its systems and IT service offerings with a new program called VITO, Virtual Information Technology Officer.
The program provides CIO- or CTO-level leadership for companies who can’t afford to hire a $200,000-a-year executive, or are growing and not sure if they need someone in that position. The VITO will work at the company part-time or full-time to provide executive-level leadership on a major project or systems changeover.
“It’s not unlike outsourcing IT staff, but it’s on the executive level and helps company leaders understand why their IT staff is or isn’t capable of doing what they need them to do,” says Kurt Stevens, who leads the program. “For example, maybe the company has complex IT issues and not enough seasoned IT talent to address or oversee them because they’ve gotten rid of or lost most of their senior people over time.”
The VITO program fills a number of diverse needs a company might have, such as creating a three-year IT plan, creating a detailed capital budget, providing project management expertise to manage important IT projects, providing temporary executive leadership when workload is above capacity, and assessing and designing an effective IT organizational structure.
Since launching the program last November, the VITO team has grown from one person to six. In addition, the growth of the company created 16 new jobs — 12 in Grand Rapids, two in Minneapolis, one in Atlanta and one in Lansing.
Source: Kurt Stevens, Open Systems Technologies
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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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