Top IT executives must work with colleagues in operational posts and then make sure their departments support corporate business processes now and into the future, they said.

The CIOs on the panel all emphasized the need to make technology subservient to business processes. Following that rule, they said, should ensure that IT departments contribute to the corporate bottom line.

"We [in IT] think every year of revenue enhancement and cost-saving opportunities," said panelist Joshua Jewett, CIO at Family Dollar Stores Inc., a Matthews, N.C.-based retail chain.

"There is a danger for a CIO to be seen as being too much associated with just technology," Jewett said. "Technology rarely delivers a return on investment on its own. Technology facilitates a business vision. It doesn't provide that vision and doesn't make it happen."

Jewett said he works with the business side of Family Dollar to formulate a business vision and to create cross-functional teams of IT and business personnel to find solutions that meet that vision.