Last year brought more than its share of disruption, and there's no sign of any let up as 2023 gains momentum. Here are ways CIOs should prepare to face any eventuality, and come out the other side even stronger.
The effects of such an unpredictable environment are profound, and no organization in any industry is immune. Looking across our client base, we expect to see varying degrees of impact as the turbulence continues. The common thread? In almost every case, there's an increased need for data insight and technology-enabled agility to reaffirm technology's position at the center of investment strategy in order to achieve organizational growth.
Successful digital transformation strategies focus on people, not technology. Use this expert advice to keep your plan human-centric
Digital transformation is now cemented into mainstream vernacular, but it is far from fully understood. Contrary to what you might glean from software marketing pamphlets, installing a new technological system is not the solution to your organization's biggest problems. Successful digital transformation initiatives are not centered on the technology itself but on the people they serve.
Post pandemic, automation has been making big waves across the globe in transforming businesses and making significant impact on the organization's growth and development cycle.
Automation trends such as intelligent automation, hyper-automation, chatbots, etc. are being extensively used by businesses to process huge volume of data, automate business operations, and make them faster and more efficient. Changing customer needs have led enterprises to double down on their delivery efforts - with a renewed focus on operational efficiency, productivity, and resilience.
A recent Deloitte report states that 53% of organizations have already started implementing robotic process automation (RPA). Furthermore, Gartner forecasts that, by 2024, hyper-automation will allow organizations to lower operational costs by 30 percent. By 2025, the market for hyper-automation software will hit nearly $860 billion.
Once settled into a new workspace and role, IT leaders can begin to assess how their new department works (and doesn't) in five key areas.
For new CIOs entering an IT department, their first instinct may be to expect the worst. Many arrive at organizations that have complicated histories or thinly veiled chaos and uneasiness. This status quo of inner turmoil puts a lot of upfront pressure on new CIOs.
They often face a maze of challenges: employees who are loyal to their old leader, messy budgets, looming technical debt, systems held together with duct tape, and dysfunctional teams. But while joining a department can be overwhelming, these challenges also mean that a new CIO (or CTO) can have a huge and lasting impact on the organization they serve.
As the chief information security officer (CISO), it is important to effectively communicate with the board of directors (BOD) and its audit subcommittee about the organization's cyber risk posture and strategy.
This can help the BOD understand the potential impact of cyber threats on the organization and make informed decisions about risk management, including capital allocation and spend relative to industry peers.
Effective communication with the BOD requires understanding their perspective and priorities. The BOD is responsible for overseeing the overall management and performance of the organization, and they may be more concerned with financial and strategic risks than with technical details. It is important for the CISO to present information in a way that is relevant and understandable to the BOD, and to clearly articulate the potential impact of cyber risks on the organization's bottom line.
Inflation Throttles Consumer Purchasing Power, But Enterprise IT Spending Remains Strong
Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.5 trillion in 2023, an increase of 2.4% from 2022, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. This is down from the previous quarter's forecast of 5.1% growth. While inflation continues to erode consumer purchasing power and drive device spending down, overall enterprise IT spending is expected to remain strong.
'Consumers and enterprises are facing very different economic realities,' said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. 'While inflation is devastating consumer markets, contributing to layoffs at B2C companies, enterprises continue to increase spending on digital business initiatives despite the world economic slowdown.
C-suite executives and board members are targeted through their personal devices as cybercriminals look to penetrate corporate systems and access sensitive and proprietary information. Protecting them requires a holistic approach.
High-level executives, including board members and C-level executives, often have access to sensitive information, making them prime targets for bad actors looking to penetrate corporate defenses. Their personal devices, among other points of entry, are glaring attack vectors for cybercriminals looking to get in on the top floor.
As CISOs know, cyber incidents all too often include the human element-and executives are all too human. According to the Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, 82% of breaches involved a human element, the bulk of them involving phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and stolen credentials.
Organizations with a better grip on it recognize that interoperability isn't a final destination, it's an ongoing process that requires a constant examination of OT, IT and business needs.
For business and IT leaders, it's the best of times and the worst of times. On one hand, today's mix of technologies makes it possible to unleash innovation at scale -- and even disrupt markets and industries. On the other hand, the complexity of today's systems -- and figuring out how all the pieces fit together -- can push even the most tech-savvy organization to the breaking point.
Taming the chaos is essential. A recent report from Accenture, Value Untangled: Accelerating Radical Growth through Interoperability, found that organizations with a strong digital core and the ability to connect a wide range of technology components grow revenue streams 6x faster than peers. In addition, they navigate business and IT transformations 11% faster.
The technology landscape is rapidly evolving - so too is the way IT chiefs should lead their organizations. Here's which old rules of IT leadership are no longer relevant and what has replaced them.
The CIO role continues to evolve, changing as dramatically as the technology it manages and maintains.
Moreover, the pace of the chief IT position's transformation seems to be accelerating - likewise mirroring the speed of change in the tech stack.
Consequently, tech executives must lead, manage, and work differently than they did in the past. How so? Veteran CIOs, researchers, and advisors share the changes they're seeing, offering a look at the new rules of IT leadership and the old ones they've replaced.
What can the new-look CIO do to construct a successful IT function that goes hand-in-hand with the rest of the business?
Businesses everywhere are currently undergoing some kind of digital transformation as they focus on improving the delivery and scope of their latest products and services. In doing so, technology spending power has begun to move away from the CIO's reporting line, and towards the rest of the business. As a result, the role of the CIO is changing - fast.
Where once they were primarily concerned with building and delivering technology, CIOs today are likely to focus more on influencing the purchase of a range of technologies, and on nurturing talent and innovation across the business.
Ron Reiter, CTO at cybersecurity startup Sentra, shares the different expectations of a CTO and how he balances vision with execution
Chief technology officer is a role that won't always be consistent across every organization. While CPOs, CFOs, and even CEOs generally have similar roles and responsibilities, the CTO's job can vary widely depending on how much they participate in product development, R&D, and selling the business as a whole.
At highly technical startups, a CTO will be expected to work closely with the product, taking technical responsibility for its development and success. At less technical startups, this type of hands-on leadership is less important. The head of product and CTO can be two different people. The same applies to R&D: At some startups, the CTO will report to the VP of R&D; at others, one person handles both jobs.
The Nutanix IT chief has taken a product mindset to the employee experience, thinking deeply about core principles that make a difference in enabling hybrid work before executing on them.
Wendy M. Pfeiffer is a technology leader who's as dedicated to excellence in operations and delivery as she is to maintaining a focus on innovation. She joined Nutanix as SVP and CIO following a successful career leading technology teams at companies like GoPro, Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and Robert Half. Highly regarded by her industry peers for her courageous transparency and candor, Pfeiffer also serves on the boards of Qualys, SADA Systems, and the American Gaming Association (AGA).
CIOs must be in alignment with the CEO, CFO, and other department leaders to ensure a common goal and develop a strategy where IT helps enable attainment of those enterprise aims.
After three years of pandemic pressures and the resulting shifts in established business operating procedures, CIOs are looking to shift out of reactionary mode and become a more strategic partner in the business.
This means engaging with the business earlier in their business decision-making cycle about how technology can help them, partnering closely with the CEO and the CFO to narrow the focus on how technology can help the organization achieve its business outcomes for the year and beyond.
More than a dozen IT leaders share their tech predictions (52 in all) for 2023.
Between the outbreak of a war and fears of a recession, not to mention massive layoffs and burnout in overworked employees, including IT professionals, it's good to finally put 2022 behind us. But many of these problems are still haunting us, and will continue to do so deep into 2023.
But the outlook isn't all grim. We at ITPro Today have made our tech predictions for 2023:
Distributing decision-making authority at pace for technical and financial approvals is an essential component of digital transformation, but are CIOs ready to let go?
Two events influenced Schneider Electric CIO Elizabeth Hackenson to distribute more decision-making authority throughout the company's IT organization. 'During the pandemic we needed to have people make as many local decisions as possible,' which she says was essential to keep operations moving across the 100 countries in which the company operates. More importantly, the company's push toward digital transformation required that IT speed up its decision-making processes. Schneider Electric's IT organization achieved that goal by reducing the layers for technology- and budget-related approvals, and by trusting managers and staff to make as many of those decisions as possible within the company's 'delegation of authority pathways' framework.
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