CIO & LEADER-November 2017 (1)

Insight
A
According to 2018 Gartner CIO Agenda
Survey, 51% of CIOs surveyed in India reported
that they are taking charge of innovation and
49% have indicated that they are heading up
digital transformation.
The survey results show that, overall 95% of
CIOs expect their jobs to change or be remixed
due to digitalization. IT delivery management
is taking up less and less of the CIO's time.
Respondents believe that the two biggest transformations
in the CIO role will be becoming a
change leader, followed by assuming increased
and broader responsibilities and capabilities.
Globally growth is the No. 1 CIO
priority for 2018
However in India, CIOs reported optimizing
enterprise operational excellence (66%), tracking
business value of IT (64%) and business cost
optimization (62%) as their top priorities. The
good news for CIOs in India is that more money
will be available to support these priorities. IT
budgets in India are expected to increase by
7.4% in 2018. This compares to an expected 3%
IT budget increase globally.
Define the role – focus attention
beyond IT
At least 84% of all top CIOs surveyed have
responsibility for areas of the business outside
traditional IT. The most common are innovation
and transformation. 51% of respondents in
India said that the CIO in their organization is
in charge of innovation while 49% said the CIO
heads up digital transformation and 30% said
the CIO leads enterprise change. The survey
found that CIOs are spending more time on the
business executive elements of their jobs compared
with three years ago. In fact, CIOs from
top performing organizations are spending up
to four days more on executive leadership. The more
mature an enterprise's digital business is, the more
likely the CIO will report to the CEO.
In a change from previous surveys, respondents
were asked to name the top differentiating technologies
(in previous years they were asked about investment
levels). Business intelligence (BI) and analytics
still retain the No. 1 spot, with top performers most
likely to consider them strategic.
Implement the new role
79% of CIOs report that digital business is making
their IT organizations more "change-ready," which
suggests that now is a good time to implement change
to the IT organizations, and, in turn, should make the
transition to the new job of the CIO easier.
The first part of the new job of the CIO is to build
the required bench strength to scale the enterprise's
digital business through support for the digital ecosystem.
This means hiring new resources to put in
place the right digital team structures. Some CIOs
favor a separate digital team while others make digitalization
part of the day job of IT. However, 71% of
the top performers have a separate digital team to
help them scale their digitalization efforts. The most
common structure for these teams is to report to the
CIO, although the biggest difference between the top
performers and their peers is in the CEO reporting
relationship of these teams.
"The effects of digitalization are profound.
The impact on the job of CIO and on the IT organization
itself should not be underestimated," said
Rowsell-Jones. "In this new world, CIO success is not
based on what they build, but the services that they
integrate. The IT organization will move from manufacturer
to buyer, and the CIO will become an expert
orchestrator of services. The real finding though is
that this is happening now. CIOs must start scaling
their digital business and changing their own jobs
with it now."
November 2017 | CIO&LEADER
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