The Evolution of A CIO

Bangalore: Contemporary CIOs have an operational and strategic priority, in addition to the technology priority, to lend support to the mission of the business and contribute in the generation of revenue. As such, it would not come as a surprise if we encounter a whole new breed of CIOs, shouldering various roles and responsibilities in the coming years, reports Bryan Yurcan of Banktech.

It seems the CIO is evolving from managing technologies to business relationships, both within and outside their domain. According to Gartner, this change is primarily caused by a shift in focus from cost to growth, from automation to amplification and most importantly, from IT to technology.

Initially, a CIO was solely identified with cost cutting and developing applications as well as processes. But the role of a CIO has undergone huge paradigm shift with the advent of neoteric technologies and rising consumerization. IT is viewed more as a ‘product and services’ sector rather than an ‘order-taker’ department.

As Gartner group VP, Mark McDonald states, “This is a critical difference. IT solutions like ERP, CRM and the like automate the enterprise with a focus on consolidation and cost. Technologies such as mobile, social, big data and cloud are fundamentally different than IT. These technologies amplify performance and strategy.”

Therefore, as the role of the CIO is moving towards outsourced model to include managed services, cloud computing and management tasks, that combines business and IT capabilities under single unit, it has become imperative for a CIO to emerge from the shell of its traditional role in focusing around IT operations to a more direct role in ensuring customer value creation.