Since CIO Dive’s inaugural publication went live to the world in July 2015, the evolution of IT has thrust the CIO nearer to enterprise decision-making.
Buoyed by the star energy of digital capabilities, CIOs helped their firms bridge the hole between technological innovation and the favorable enterprise outcomes it permits, gaining C-suite affect alongside the best way.
For PagerDuty CIO Eric Johnson, who spent the previous decade serving as CIO throughout a number of firms, the broad enterprise transfer towards the cloud proved integral to the modifications.
“Wanting again, I felt like there have been numerous issues we wished to do, however generally the tech hadn’t fairly caught up,” stated Johnson, who in 2015 was serving as CIO for software program firm DocuSign. “CIOs have been beginning to come out of the again workplace. They have been beginning to get extra publicity and extra alternative to work with go-to-market groups, and beginning to have a greater voice as executives within the enterprise.”
Alongside an ongoing push to embrace the cloud, the ecosystem of software program suppliers swelled with SaaS choices in the course of the 2010s, difficult tech chiefs to navigate a posh setting.
“As a CIO, you have been now not in command of the infrastructure,” stated Merim Becirovic, CIO at Boston Consulting Group. “Up till that time, that was the norm in most organizations.”
Although at instances critics called for the demise of the role, CIOs spent the previous decade proudly owning digital operations, guiding organizations by means of waves of expertise change and leaping to reply to a number of crises — together with an overnight move to remote work in 2020. Now, they proceed to steer their companies into uncharted waters as AI seeps into extra elements of each group.
CIOs and the C-suite
IT improvements led to a more in-depth relationship between CIOs and their C-suite counterparts. The shift was pushed partly by larger boardroom consciousness of expertise’s position.
“Whereas a CIO nonetheless must do some schooling, the acumen of the C-suite has been rising,” stated Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Christie Struckman. “They now have rather more savvy companions that they should speak to, in order that turns into a special seat on the desk.”
The rise in tech savviness has elevated the boardroom view of the CIO. CEOs rank CIOs and chief expertise officers among the many most effective leaders in the C-suite, in line with PwC information revealed final yr.
With back-of-house duties like information middle administration more and more out of their purview, and extra mature instruments within the IT toolkit, CIOs spent extra time connecting expertise to core enterprise areas.
“By the point 2019 rolled round, I actually felt like there was no debate: the CIO is completely a key enterprise accomplice throughout the group and, in lots of instances, even proactively main and driving enterprise initiatives,” Johnson stated.
Partnership throughout the group has remained a key theme for CIOs. A Gartner survey of over 2,500 CIOs revealed in October 2023 discovered greater than half are operating expertise by means of an “operator mindset,” during which they retain digital delivery responsibility however accomplice with CxOs on digital initiatives.
In one other signal of the extra direct hyperlink with core enterprise operations, the highest final result for CIOs is to enhance buyer or citizen experiences, in line with greater than 3 in 5 respondents.
“Enterprise acumen has turn into desk stakes,” Struckman stated of CIOs concerned in external-facing features of the enterprise.
The brand new frontier
With AI taking up the expertise agenda, the clear problem forward for CIOs is to stay trusted advisors for his or her organizations, serving to beat back vendor hype whereas supporting deep transformations in how firms work.
“As I mirror on conversations with friends and the evolution of this position, it’s clear CIOs are taking up broader accountability for enterprise functionality constructing, particularly in areas like information and AI,” Principal Monetary Group EVP and CIO Kathy Kay stated in an e mail.
Embedding AI throughout organizations is a course of CIOs are deeply concerned in, as CEOs pursue AI-driven revenue gains.
“The power to successfully use and handle generative AI fashions will turn into the first measure of worth and success for CIOs,” Sinclair Schuller, EY Americas Accountable AI Chief, instructed CIO Dive. “Moreover, the CIO will play a pivotal position in rolling out AI for all staff, guiding human-AI collaboration to make sure success whereas avoiding introducing vital danger to their group.”
Although data woes, skill shortages and different AI-related issues swell, CIOs — it appears — are up for the problem.
“That is essentially the most thrilling time to be a CIO,” Johnson stated. “I am unable to consider a time the place we have had that a lot affect, that a lot accountability, and we have been that necessary to an organization’s long-term success.”
