Advertisment

The new age CIO: Cost Innovation Officer

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

BANGALORE, INDIA: The marriage of technology and business has gave birth to an indispensable role within organizations. With IT modernization becoming the norm, organizations had to bring in the experts to prevent costly mistakes. Enter - the CIO. With technology increasingly being used to reduce costs, increase efficiency and harness productivity the role of the CIO has evolved from that of a support function to being central to key strategic operations. With this evolution comes the question: Can the CIO of today transform into the Cost Innovation Officer of tomorrow? 

At two recently-organised conferences to focus on Acer-Intel Smart Workplace Awards, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of major companies voted cost innovation to be the major factor in the future growth of the Indian economy. The conferences were held in Delhi and Bangalore to herald the smart offices of future. Acer and Intel, along with The Economic Times have sought submission from smart offices all across the country to recognize and facilitate offices that are gearing up to meet the challenges of the future.

The relevance of this question can be gauged by the fact that increasingly IT prowess lends to a distinct competitive advantage. Industry leaders echo the thought that in a rapidly emerging world, the roles and responsibilities of CIO has witnessed a sea change.

Most successful companies are the ones that deliver the right products and services faster, more efficiently, more securely and more cost effectively than their competitors and the key to that is a practical implementation of enterprise technology to improve business performance.

At the CIO conference organized for industry leaders, Narendra Bhandari, Director, Asia Pacific-DRD SSG, Intel said, “The CIO has a major role in any organisation. He should fuel business as he would be enabling the innovation. Innovation is incremental and not out of the world”.

Even government departments have modernized their processes and now require highly experienced IT executives to cut the best deals for their organizations. One of the most famous examples of this was Richard Granger, who joined the UK's National Health Service (NHS) to head up the National Programme for IT; he shook up IT procurement and upset some vendors.

S Janakiraman, President and CEO, MindTree Ltd says, “The role of CIO has changed a lot. In fact, the job is so interwoven that at every level employees can enjoy greater flexibility in the workplace. CIO’s role has over the years, become an enabler from just being a technology practitioner. Earlier, most CIOs came from either engineering or finance backgrounds but today the trend has changed. The CIO must be a business leader than a technology leader to understand technology and to implement effectively in the organization. "

He also noted that within MindTree, the role of CIO includes providing an atmosphere wherein employees are comfortable and also share its convenience. The work culture at MindTree enables the employees to have physical infrastructure wherein the company provides smart workplace, intellectual infrastructure by providing the employees to come out with new ideas and innovations and lastly emotional infrastructure where the employees can feel at home ambience in the company. He also highlighted that CIOs must understand the energy usage and green movements and should actively participate in it.

The synergy created by the use of technology between employees, customers and suppliers takes the role of a CIO from a mere technology expert to a driver of cultural change, a change that can be sustained by constant innovation. S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India says, “Globalization has played a tremendous role in the transformation of the role played by CIO in an organization. CIO should not necessarily be a tech savvy but also possess soft skill repository. Anil Khatri, Vice President, SAP India states, “The CIO's role is not just to look for cost reduction but he needs to have a helicopter view and should interact with all business process within the organization from sales to marketing to human resource all of which are tied to IT."

With the industry bigwigs reiterating the symbiotic relationship between technology and business, the CIO's role is poised for an evolution which will encompass all functions of business.  Heavyweights like Acer and Intel along with Economic Times have acknowledged this trend and have conceptualized the Smart Workplace Awards. The awards aim to recognize organizations that empower employees, increase their ability to stay connected through technology and make life easy for employees and customers. Technology can often intimidate and confuse employees, this award aims to reward the organizations that use the right blend of man and machine power to increase efficiency and boost productivity.