A president of a manufacturing company called you to seek your advice with respect to the information systems department. She told you that at the moment, being relatively small, they use the information systems for clerical purposes. They generate financial reports twice a month. They calculate the payroll twice a month. In addition, each end user uses the information systems for his/her own activities by using Excel, Word, and other similar programs. Obviously, the company was located in the support quadrant of the strategic grid. They have an IS manager who takes care of operating the system, maintaining the network and the communication between the end users, the PCs and printers. He is the only IS employee at the company, but as she said, he is excellent. He is very reliable, has excellent technical skills, is available whenever necessary, and he knows everything he has to know in order to keep the IS running. She told you that she was very lucky to have him, and that she would like very much to promote him in order to reward him as he deserves.

Then the President told you of new opportunities the company has. They are going to buy two companies that produce complementary products. By owning these two companies they will be able to offer more products and services, to add more value to their customers, and consequently increase their sales and business volume. The President also told you that one of her friends informed her that when they become a large company, they may be able to use the information systems for strategic purposes as well. She was told that by using the information systems in a business-oriented way, they would be able to gain competitive advantage. Since she heard you were a great consultant (you were recommended to her by your IS professor), she wanted you to advise her about filling the position of the head of the new information systems department. She indicated that in the two companies they are going to buy, there are several IS people (systems analysis, designers, and programmers), and she has to decide who will head the new IS department. She told you that given his performance, she was confident that her current IS manager would be very good at managing the new IS department. She thought that the current manager would be able to promote the information systems at the new company to be used as a managerial, strategic, and competitive tool, and that she was happy to promote him to become a CIO. She asked for you opinion about promoting the current IS manager.

What would your recommendation be? Please explain and justify.