New Digital Transformation Insights Show the Magnitude of Role Change for the CIO

Digital transformation continues to intensify the CIO's workload of complexity, demand, security, and stability in their organization. This completely aligns with their focus on:

• KTLO (or keeping the lights on)
• Making business-first decisions
• Getting data right

New insights are showing just how much the CIO is evolving in the era of digital transformation. In fact, they're in charge of leading this transformation while balancing business goals with their existing technologies. For example, according to the 2020 State of the CIO Executive Summary from IDG:

67% of CIOs say new revenue-generating initiatives are among their job responsibilities

44% of CIOs are prioritizing efforts to align IT initiatives with business goals

34% are leading change efforts across their organization

22% are assisting in the creation of new go-to-market strategies and technologies

The bigger problem is most companies remain in the beginning stages of their efforts to evolve with digital transformation. This is a challenge that significantly impact the technological and business success of an organization. So, both sides have to come together to implement the right solution. In other words, the technology and the culture have to change.

According to Gartner:

By 2021, CIOs will be as responsible for culture change as Chief Human Resources Officers.

50% of CIOs report that the main barrier to digital transformation is culture.

80% of mid-size to large enterprises will change their culture to accelerate digital transformation.

That's on the culture side. On the technology side, the focus on the data and on all architecture disciplines. Businesses will need a new enterprise architecture to support the exploding volume of digital business workflows and highly interactive traffic behaviors.

In fact, Gartner identified this the top 10 trends impacting infrastructure and operations for 2020. They said:

50% of enterprise IT infrastructures will focus on centers of data rather than traditional data centers by 2022.

The process can break down this way:

Standards and data management
Operating under tried and true parameters allows you to build reliable architectures, free up people and resources to focus on innovation, and meet future business needs.

Business-first architecture
Ensure that the business strategy drives architecture rather than the other way around. Technology-driven architecture rarely meets business needs and timelines.

Future architecture strategies
Understand the data's scope and nature to ensure that long-term security is addressed while working with flexible partners that allow you to scale pay structures based on computing capacity.

Interwoven architectural disciplines
Understand the interplay between the business, information, systems, and technology architecture.

Business forward approach
Vet technology decisions with the business leaders to avoid the risk of failing to meet business needs.

The depth of the data and the solution doesn't end here. Download the Evolving Role of the CIO in the Era of Digital Transformation whitepaper and discover a path to success in your digital transformation roadmap.