What does the CIO for Mercy Ships do?

Some of you may wonder what kind of Information Technology is required by an organizaion like Mercy Ships. I've had that conversation with many over the last 6 years. Usually it starts with a question like "What does a CIO for Mercy Ships actually do?" Most of the time, the question is asked by someone who is well aquainted with what most CIOs do, but they just can't imagine that Mercy Ships would have the same needs. When I answer what I'm up to, the usual comment is "Oh, that sounds just like all the other CIOs I know..."

Mercy Ships can be described as a multi-national "corporation" that has all of the communication and information needs as any other. We need systems to support:

• Finance (General Ledger, Accounts Recievable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, yes Payroll - that's how we get the money donated for us)
• Donor Records (Contact details for all donors, donation history/processing, recurring donation system, mailing list management, event management, etc...)
• Materials Management (Warehouse inventories, ship stores inventory, procurement requisitions, logistics coordination, etc..)
• Human Resources (Applicant tracking, Application Process Management, Staff Service Records, Training Records and Certifications, etc...)
• Communications/Collaboration (email, websites, wiki, document management systems, etc...)

When I compare the services that we require to achieve the mission of Mercy Ships with other CIOs, I find that we have all the headaches they do and often need to operate in a extremely cost efficient fashion! We have all of the challenges of multi (multi-currency, multi-language and multi-location). Most of my time as CIO has been trying to figure out how we can provide these systems and services with the small resources (funds and people) that we have.

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