This year will be pivotal for chief information officers (CIOs). It will see successful CIOs emerging from COVID-19 pandemic struggles to invest in bold strategic digital offerings, it will see them continuing to shift focus from IT management to considering what technologies can be implemented to realise business value and increasing their important leadership and educational role within the organisation.
2020 brought COVID-19 to the world, and with-it rapid spikes in remote working and BYOD, a huge upswing in investment in SaaS and cloud, and targeted and prolific cybersecurity risks. These trends proved to supercharge the role of the CIO. In fact, the pandemic and subsequent focus on remote working and resiliency of operations has brought the CIO further forward in the mind of the CEO and boards.
In Gartner’s CIO Agenda, the analysts find that 69% of boards report speeding up digital business initiatives in response to COVID-19, and that the relationship with CIOs is stronger than ever. In fact, because of COVID-19, 66% report increased strength of CIO and CEO relationship, 70% of CIOs have assumed leadership in high-impact initiatives, and 80% of CIOs are educating CEO and other senior stakeholders on the value of IT.
As businesses continue to deal with COVID-19 and digitisation, CIOs will play an increasingly important role within the organisation. We see that despite challenges, CIOs are facing a great opportunity to transform operations and models from the ground up, proving to bring businesses into a new phase of growth.
The top near term priorities for CIOs
In 2020 the CIO’s top priorities quickly shifted to enable remote working through provisioning laptops and VPN connections, accelerating cloud and SaaS adoption, and ensuring improved cybersecurity measures.
At the outset, they focus CIOs on making sure that these remote working and provisional setups are serving the organisation as required. As the year goes on, there is an undeniable opportunity for many CIOs to continue to modernise operations, working with the C-suite and boards to move forward with initiatives previously halted.
According to Gartner’s CIO Agenda, it reinforced that funding innovation pays dividends. Thus, boards of directors are ready to put real resources behind digital acceleration. Reflecting this, on average, they expect IT budgets to increase on average 2% globally. In addition, organisations that have already increased their funding of digital innovation are 2.7 times more likely to be top performers than trailing performers, Gartner states.
In terms of where the money will go, CIOs will look at how to improve the bottom line and drive business value through technology solutions. This will include anything from mobile-first ecommerce and customer experience systems, to supply chain software and AI-powered data analytics integrations for greater resiliency and intelligent decision making. These considerations will largely fall into two camps: streamlining backend operations with the likes of automation and improving front-facing experiences to increase customer acquisition and retention.
On modernisation and digital initiatives, Gartner finds that 76% of CIOs report increased demand for new digital products or services during the pandemic, and 83% expect this demand to increase further. Of the organisations that have increased their use of digital channels to reach customers or citizens are 3.5 times more likely to be top performers than trailing performers.
Throughout these activities, CIOs will consider cybersecurity. As cyber-attacks increase and become more targeted and sophisticated, CIOs will work closely with chief information security officers (CISOs) to ensure organisations aren’t susceptible to breaches, and company and customer data is secure.
One additional priority for CIOs will be on education. As CIOs deepen their knowledge of specific processes and company or team-wide changes are executed, the CIO becomes the go-to advisor and leader on systems and processes from a functional standpoint. This calls for CIOs to develop their ‘soft skills’, including management and communication.
Top near-term challenges for CIOs
There’s no denying that despite the great opportunities for CIOs, they are also facing significant challenges.
This year, CIOs will continue to face growth roadblocks as lack of buy-in from boards and executives for digital transformation initiatives. In addition, they will probably deal with smaller and distributed teams, running into difficulties with talent acquisition, and experiencing an increase in expectations and responsibilities within the organisation.
On remote working, Gartner states 52% of CIOs expect work from home to increase. This brings challenges around funding and rightsizing the assets to support remote and hybrid workforce models. An ongoing challenge for CIOs, that has been exacerbated by work from home models, is the need to move from legacy to modern infrastructure and choose systems and solutions that support the function and growth of operations.
With the evolution of their role, according to Deloitte’s Tech Trends report, CEOs expect CIOs to be more of a driver of business strategy than COO, CFO or CMO combined. In addition, boards are putting more pressure on CIOs to utilise technology to achieve business goals at quicker rates. This may include the implementation of technologies that support work from home setups, and exploring the likes of AI/ML solutions, RPA, distributed cloud and multi experience platforms, and technologies that support supply chains.
Within this, CIOs will also potentially more tightly controlled budgets, the need to optimise cost while generating revenue through digital initiatives, compliance requirements and data protection, ensuring business continuity, and developing internal and external user experiences.
What defines a successful CIO
Certain qualities will define a successful CIO. Broadly, more than ever CIOs need to be well-versed in creative problem solving and resourcefulness, they need to innovate, be able to make important decisions at speed, and become an educator and leader within the organisation.
CIOs must understand they are a change agent within the leadership team, and they must have a robust and integrated plan. Their strategy must remain focused on how to allocate funds and resources, on how best to increase business revenue, on achieving risk management and security, on how to build internal talent and skill, and on delivering competitive customer support and experiences.
APTA is here to enable the modern CIO. We’re committed to building a community of intelligent and like-minded IT and industry leaders. Our events share the latest information about technology trends, the regulatory environment, and the latest in digitisation. Get in the know, build connections, and accelerate growth.
Comments