Technology is dynamic and drives innovation. That said, all organizations need an IT leader, yes – the CIO – to address the challenges and bring about necessary changes. While CIOs were always the go-to person for any major IT initiative, the proliferation in technology trends including Artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and IoTs, for example, have bolstered the top CIO priorities, making them more accountable.
A Statista study indicates that the share of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) who believe that the CIO role is becoming influential has increased to 71% in 2017.
This article delves into why CIOs are important, the emerging role of the CIOs, and more.
Let’s get started.
Why are CIOs important for organizations?
IT department forms one of the cornerstones of any modern organization. CIOs, being the IT leaders, provide direction and steer the organization toward the business objectives. That said, they must be adept at decision-making and collaborate with the stakeholders, to derive meaningful business outcomes.
An efficient CIO must envision a holistic picture, analyzing the design, development, and administration of the company. CIOs must overlook the progress and development of the company’s communications network, suggest software and hardware upgrades and, conduct a cost-benefit analysis of every change in IT workflow. While these are some of the key tasks performed by CIOs, the rise of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and cloud computing has increased their responsibilities significantly.
Considering the emerging technology trends, CIOs are expected to re-assess the organization’s cloud strategy, plan for investing in updating legacy systems, and revamping the data analytics space with new developments, GDPR, and other privacy regulations – to name a few. It is the CIOs who hold the potential to decide which technology initiatives, for example, digital transformation or IoT is crucial for business continuity. In essence, technological advances have redefined the role and responsibilities of CIOs, making them more indispensable than ever before.
Forbes study mentions some of the finest companies with outstanding CIOs including Lyft, ServiceNow, and more.
Emerging Role of CIOs
Ever wondered how would it be to operate without a CIO? Well, that would pose a lot of otherwise avoidable challenges. CIOs are the single point of contact between the CEOs and the rest of the teams, with regard to IT needs. It is not justified to expect CEOs to understand the nitty-gritty and technicalities underpinning various IT investments.
That’s where the CIO comes into the picture. The primary role of CIOs is to enable the CEOs to be cognizant of the diverse IT components in the realm, including the key projects, milestones ahead, teams assigned to various tasks, and more.
So, how do the CIOs achieve this? Well, some of the ways these goals can be achieved are:
Chalking out a roadmap
The best strategy to showcase the different IT investments that need to be earmarked towards various IT needs of the organization is through a well-drafted roadmap. CEOs prefer snapshots of planned or to-be-executed tasks, capturing the crux of the details. That said, CIOs must prepare a crisp, yet informative and resourceful roadmap that demonstrates the IT needs of different divisions or units across the company.
Ideally, a roadmap must highlight the initiatives of the imminent projects, followed by sub-projects, tasks, or milestones drilling down further into the smallest chunks of work. This would present a crystal clear picture to the CEO and help the CIO succeed in explaining their plan within the limited time constraints. A great idea would be to reference the roadmap as Version 1.0, for instance, which on further suggestions or amendments by the CEO would evolve into future versions.
Highlighting the Project teams
Once the roadmap team is set up, the next step is to identify the person who would take up accountability for the various projects discussed on the roadmap. Depending on the size and complexity of the projects, more than one member may be appointed to look at the different requirements of these initiatives. While some projects might involve internal teams, others may require interventions from external vendors, third-party sources, or such.
Considering the Operations team
When you drill down further, you need someone reliable to entrust with the task of upgrading virtual machines or active directories or such. This could probably be your IT manager, however, don’t let your CIO do these errands. Quite often, CIOs suffer from the misconception that these tasks are under their direct purview and they need to “personally” perform them. This is where delegation becomes imperative, making your IT managers take the reins while the CIOs perform other more important jobs.
Managing Services
While IT services are mostly outsourced to Managed Service Providers, care must be taken to make sure this segment is not ignored. Furthermore, managing MSPs itself proves a herculean task, in addition to the costs incurred; the focus must be on bringing the services component in-house. The pros and cons of outsourcing the IT services to MSPs versus managing them in-house must be weighed.
Closing thoughts
Undoubtedly, CIOs are one of the key pillars on which the IT segment of an organization rests. The top CIO priorities are discussed here. The best strategy is to chalk out Version1.0 (V1) of the roadmap, outlining all the aspects from major projects, to project teams, operations, and services in a structured format, that is open to changes based on the CEO’s inputs and recommendations.