The Four Top Factors Reshaping the CIOs Role

Late last year, research firm Harvey Nash approached 2029 CIOs from all over the world to identify current issues impacting their role. This 2013 CIO Survey report outlines four major factors contributing to the CIO’s role within an organisation:

1. Increased efficiencies brought on by new technology

Paolo Cinelli, CIO of IKEA Group explains, “Now that everyone understands the power of information technology and its potential impact to the business, CIOs have the challenge to fully leverage such power and ensure high positive impact, especially on business growth”.

With the advent of cloud technologies, mobility and other advancements delivering efficiencies to organisations in terms of both process and cost, CIOs are thrust into the role of leveraging technology to boost the business’ growth and maximise profit. CIOs are now less focused on ‘keeping the lights on’ as a result, and are gravitating toward core activities which will have a direct contribution to the business’ success.

Additionally, 43% of respondents now see that the CIO has succeeded in making technology ‘fundamental to competitiveness’, and the IT team is increasingly known for delivering innovation value. It is also found that CIOs generally feel they have lost control of IT assets to a certain extent, and hence are adopting more of an influencer role. Therefore, CIOs now see inter-department collaboration and persuasiveness as crucial to ‘champion a technology vision’, and are increasingly making efforts to build relationships with other departments.

2. Greater emphasis on innovation

71% of CIOs see great potential for innovation in their industry. Some even go so far as to say organisations that do not innovate or embrace new technology lose market share. Despite having high innovation potential, only 2% of CIOs believed that they have successfully done it. Perhaps this could attributed to lack of senior management support, as over half of the CIOs surveyed – 57% – see a lack of support from the board to achieve IT vision.

However, 70% of the CIOs surveyed pinpointed that there is not enough time or resources being invested in innovation. And because of this belief, 68% of respondents are determined to invest more in mobility, 58% will invest more in cloud and 50% will invest more in collaboration over the course of this year, believing that cloud, collaboration and mobility are keys to unlocking competitive advantage for their company.

Chily Fachler, CIO of Encore Tickets asks himself, “Am I striking the correct balance between innovating and driving the business forward whilst at the same time ensuring that the infrastructure, systems and applications already in place are maintained to the highest standards of performance and reliability?” He is probably not the only one who questions this, as ultimately, all innovation programs must contribute to growth.

3. Avoiding skill shortages

It is disconcerting to find that almost half of the CIOs surveyed are affected by a skill shortage, and deem this shortage to be the primary barrier for their organisation to keep up with the pace of change. And because of this, talent retention is more crucial than ever with 9 out of 10 CIOs being somewhat or greatly concerned with keeping their IT talent within the organisation.

One of their talent retention tactics is to engage in flexible employment options from contract employment to part-time working, job sharing, or outsourcing to partner organisations. 28% of CIOs now have a flexible workforce. Additionally, employees are increasingly using their own device to access corporate data, exposing more CIOs to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon. Despite seeing BYOD negatively, CIOs know the use of unauthorized devices to access an organisation’s data needs to be managed and therefore, expect investment in BYOD to grow.

As Richard McLaren, Managing Director of Data and Sciences as Mi9 puts it, “People are the difference: our challenge is to involve the whole team in creating a place where people want to be and can do great work. Core skills are shifting every day; advanced statistics, data visualization and DevOps are all recent requirements and in short supply. Finding people who are curious, multi-skilled and can operate effectively in two or three related disciplines is a key part of bringing teams together and bridging silos”.

4. Stable IT budgets

In 2013, the majority of CIOs surveyed – 43% – have been allocated with larger budgets, 29% were allocated the same and 28% had lower budgets. Despite these 43% of CIOs having their budgets growing faster than expected, CIOs generally remain cautious with their budget expectations.

The survey found that IT budgets have begun to stabilise, returning to pre-recession levels. Between 2008 and 2011, CIOs were only granted IT budgets if they could prove their ability to generate ROI. As a result, according to the report, “today’s budget growth has been hard fought and based on clearly demonstrated value to the organisation”.

On a more strategic note, CIOs understand that the CEO and CFO have a major influence on all budget decisions. With that in mind, the need for collaboration between CIOs and CEOs or CFOs becomes even more critical. Overall, the CIO role has become significantly more strategic and more crucial for a business to achieve its growth objectives.

 

Tags CIO Leadership

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