The CIO Challenge: Adapt and Expand

The CIO role is changing. In the past, CIOs may have focused primarily on IT and data security. Today, many CIOs say their role is evolving to become more strategic. Almost half (49%) believe they need to spend less time on purely IT matters and instead want to push the IT function towards becoming a strategic enabler across the business.

Digital transformation is the larger initiative, but CIOs are now tied to change management, customer demands, operational excellence and compliance through these processes. And 60% agree that “our business leaders are too focused on short-term costs of system modernisation to see the long-term value of digital transformation”. A significant majority of respondents see their role not just as providers of technology and data functions, but as educators who must enable and motivate the business as a whole, while unlocking the vital resource of data-driven insight to enable quality decision-making.

CIOs and the IT function must still cover the basics and plug data gaps, providing reliable, accurate data to all stakeholders who need it and ensuring that all sensitive and mission-critical data remains secure. But other demands that require greater insight and faster time to action have moved up the agenda in recent months, requiring increased agility.

This change of pace is reflected in the pain points that CIOs say are driving a need for technology transformation: 45% say they need to innovate more quickly and 43% are under pressure to create greater enterprise agility