1. Chapter 4
The CIO Challenge
said Mark McDonald, group vice
president at Gartner. “CIOs require
a new agenda that incorporates
hunting for new digital innovations
and opportunities, and harvesting
value from products, services, and
operations.”
IT budgets have come under attack
in the recession and the CIO’s mantra
has been “doing more for less.”
Indeed, IT budgets have been flat or
declining since the dot-com bust of
2002. Today, with new technology
available, the CIO’s role is changing
from cost-cutter-in-chief to cloud
broker and chief innovator. CIOs can
be pathfinders and navigators for
businesses in the new all-digital era.
There is a strong case to be made for
investment in IT to exploit emerging
mobile, big data, social media, and
especially cloud technologies.
According to research by PWC, more
than half of all CIOs expect to be a full
partner in meeting strategic objectives.
As the report says, “Aligning IT to the
business is not the goal; having IT
drive the business is a way of using
IT’s prowess as both the guiding star
and the engine that is moving the
organisation forward.”
The opportunity for CIOs to add value
and competitive differentiation to
the business increases exponentially
as investment shifts from low-
value, commodity IT to high-value
technology. According to Gartner,
63% of IT budget is spent running
current IT infrastructure and only
16% is spent on new opportunities.
Imagine what would happen if these
numbers were reverse. What could be
done for a business if the CIO role was
expanded?
Perhaps it’s time for the Chief
Everything Officer?
1. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2304615
2. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2304615
3. Brian Hopkins quote source:
http://wwwcomputerweekly.com/news/2240186452/Companies-must-
rethink-data-sharing-say-GE-CEO-Jeff-Immelt
4. http://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology-innovation-center/cio-
strategy-innovation.jhtml
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“Digital technologies provide
a platform to achieve results,
but only if CIOs adopt new
roles and behaviours to find
digital value,”