“At Walgreen Co., the Deerfield, IL, pharmacy chain has included its CIO on its management team since the late 1990s. That has helped Walgreen connect all its pharmacies via a single software system, which the IT department updates several times a year. The IT department depends on feedback and suggestions from pharmacists and other store employees in order to make changes. Jeffrey Rein, Walgreen’s CEO, says having the CIO on his leadership team sends a message to employees that they need to make providing this feedback a priority. If you don’t involve the CIO in strategy meetings, you end up with systems that don’t serve the needs of your employees or customers,” says Mr. Rein.

One reason many companies haven’t worked closely with their IT departments is because IT professionals often struggle to explain what their departments do in language that business leaders understand, says Jerry Luftman, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, in Hoboken, J.J. That has made it hard for non-techies to see the value that an IT department contributes to a company and creates the impression that IT leaders are too focused on bits and bytes. ”