Johannesburg, 10 May 2023
For years, CIOs have been on a journey – a journey towards their digital transformation goals; a journey to the cloud; and a journey to smarter business operations. These journeys have continued despite the turbulence encountered over the past few years, with many technology and business leaders doubling down on their modernisation initiatives.
Today’s digital initiatives have as much to do with strategy as they do with technology, with CIOs looking at every investment holistically, evaluating them from a business, technology and long-term economic perspective. Gone are the days that CIOs could just digitise everything and call it a job well done. Today, the CIO’s focus on digitisation is inextricably linked to innovation, improved operations and value across the business.
This is highlighted in the findings of this year’s CIO Survey. CIOs listed executing the digital strategy as their top priority, revealing the need to accelerate time to value from digital investments. All their other leading focus areas were similarly tied into areas that offer immediate business value, including strengthening cyber security posture, implementing process automation, improving customer experience and further investing in cloud and skills.
While it could be argued that data is now the world’s most valuable commodity, these priorities prove that it is, in fact, agility. Whether CIOs are trying to ensure security and compliance, real-time data visibility or workforce engagement, their efforts are all directed at being able to seize new opportunities while protecting their organisation from volatility.
It has become about business models and value propositions for CIOs, even as they continue to invest in emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning and the internet of things (IOT). Knowing that they must be strategic about where they are investing their resources and how they are going to use their manpower and tech to fulfil their responsibilities, CIOs are looking to their partners to get the results they need.
CIOs know that they need to have the right ecosystem in place. From working with other C-suite executives to meet business goals, to leaning on the right partners and teams to better drive tech innovation, CIOs are focusing on building key relationships to enable the agility they need to help their organisations stay ahead of competitors.
This article was first published in the ITWeb Brainstorm CIO Survey 2022/2023 report, sponsored by MTN Business.
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