2013 is not going to be heavier than 2012 and it won’t be more encouraging either. Challenge will be to do more with less, putting a control over budget. Normal growth will happen, but we will have to do more work with fewer resources.
Technology challenges will continue in area of- analytics and mobility. Consumerization of IT is driving expectation from business. Overall economic situation, willingness to spend more will be very selective and from these challenges will arise.
The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier
We have significant complexity in our business for its size. Number of scenarios and number of variations that exist is phenomenally high. We are into infra sector in a significant way and challenges of infrastructure are not reducing in any manner.
The company does numerous projects across the world, in so many countries, in so many locations. Our challenges generally continues to be of connectivity to reach farfetched locations. And also keep employees engaged in terms of what is happening in business for them to collaborate with their colleagues all across.
So sharing of all those learnings, overall collaboration and connectivity, these are the two major challenges around which majority of our business revolves around.
Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment
I think mobility will have significant change because everything we do now, we are looking at doing it on mobile, smartphone, tablet etc.
The sheer nature of the PCs over laptop didn’t allow us to put the devices into hands of lots of people, who are always mobile, on the move, but the tablets are making it more easier, the bigger phones, smartphone, they are all making it easier to connect with people.
And we have really significant hopes on mobility, using which we can provide the necessary information, the data, the analytics, organizational messages or any kind of training material.
So we have hopes to leverage mobility in a really big way.
My roles and responsibilities as a CIO
Certainly it has changed significantly. Earlier there were days when the role used to more of a provider of technology and technology solution. It was lot more focused on the infrastructure. Now it is all moving into the business domain.
CIOs are trying to understand the pain areas of business and trying to provide solutions to those businesses; it may or may not be a technology solution.
The sheer role of a CIO is changing towards bringing about a better user experience and making their life easier, more productive, than collecting the requirement and going back and doing the technology project.
CIOs are becoming more and more responsible for the business outcome and not just the technology aspect of it.
Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs
If you have the art of engaging people, then you are in a position to engage the working level people, the middle management, and even the senior management. The whole art of engagement and business knowledge is becoming important. This continues as a challenge for the IT organization. Understanding the real business problem, requirement, pain points and providing solution continues to be a challenge.
"CIOs are becoming more and more responsible for the business outcome and not just the technology aspect of it."
