C-Change 2013: To survive, be catalyst in change adoption

BANGALORE, INDIA: "If you are not riding the wave of change .. you will find yourself beneath it," was the straight message from V S Parthasarathy Group CIO, EVP Group M&A, Finance and Accounts, M&M Group to CIOs attending the C-Change 2013.

A CIO's role is slowly and gradually diminishing in enterprises as other business heads in enterprises are taking over IT roles too. In this scenario, CIOs have a challenging task to stay ahead and remain game changers, Parthasarathy said while speaking on the topic "Change or perish".

"In the present scenario a CIO is in charge of innovation, communication, external collaboration, internal collaboration and enterprise agility too. However, his role and responsibilities are changing as finance heads, manufacturing head or even marking heads are getting separate IT departments under them."

Parthasarathy pointed out that in a changing business environment, we have increasing number of IT users, there are issues regarding freedom versus control and business users want ease of use and flexibility in operations whereas IT head has stood for functionality and standards.

Riding the digital tiger: Referring to survey reports Parthasarathy said in 2010 there were 81 million Internet users (7 per cent) in India the numbers are expected to go up to 350 million (28 per cent) by 2015 in India. While an individual today spends couple of hours on Internet, way back in 2010, the average Interent use in India was a merry 3.5 hours/week.

Tech trends: The new digital age is also set to witness host of new technologies like next generation user interface, mobile tablets and natural language answers.

While 5 years before its was "Brick and brick" today we live in a "Brick and click" environment. But this is going to change to "click and click - sometimes brick" soon, Parthasarathy predicts.

With advancement in technology the transition is already happening and data and information manager and business process manager are turning into value creators.

Also, business supply manger's role is also turning to that of a value creator.

Parthasaraty had four tips for CIOs before wrapping up: Aspire to be on the board, Become business integration experts, Be catalyst in change adoption ad Drive transformation.