C&L_December 2017 (1)

Insight
AAccording 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 and the enterprise.
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 Mr.
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, today. CIOs must start
scaling their digital business and changing their own
jobs with it now."
December 2017 | CIO&LEADER
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