Top ten CIO role changes through all these years

INDIA: Intriguingly enough, most CIOs have to be like a super-mom - juggling many things with sheer speed and ultra efficiency levels. One is living in ignorant bliss if one considers that a CIO's job is only about IT et al.

The ‘et al' is really really wide. A good CIO has to wear many hats, and some times, even together at the same time. As times and expectations from many business stakeholders are changing, the need to wield many responsibilities only grows and deepens.

Let's see some of these head-gears that often go without a feather.

1. Handling the CFO's pen

Who says IT is all about envisaging the technology blueprint and then hold the strings? The purse strings still belong to some other hand. That' why it is inevitable to ignore the financial underpinnings of any exciting or worthwhile IT project. The CIO has to consider various cost, ROI, support issues, scale-up scenarios and other dynamics before diving into a new pocket of technology. IT has to deliver ongoing cost improvements, looks for new ways to deliver the same IT capabilities for less, and is highly responsive to changing business needs. Work like a CIO but tread cautiously like a CFO, in short, as we can see.

2. The Digital Expert

Gartner some time back predicted a slew of changes that can be hinted back to the Web 2.0 resurgence. Like by 2016, 50 per cent of large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks, and that 30 per cent of these will be considered as essential as email and telephones are today. That means a lot of digital insight needs on part of the CIO. From whether these technologies can be deployed privately to accommodating the rise in interest for using social technologies within organizations to connect people more effectively, a lot comes back at the CIO's desk.

Almost a fifth of CIOs now act as their enterprise's chief digital officer (CDO), leading digital commerce and channels, as per a Gartner study. Although this nascent role varies in scope and style, it normally includes championing the digital vision for the business - that is, ensuring that the business is evolving optimally in the new digital context.

3. The CEO Man Monday

CIOs can only aspire to climb the corporate ladder all the way up to the CEO's rung, and even that ambition is often subject to debates and doubts. But no matter what, CIOs are facing a gap that prompts them to put on a CEO's glasses every now and then. To see the big picture and strategic connotations before deciding or proposing an IT change. Strategic contours have to be assessed in the way and with the merciless prudence of a CEO only. That helps as a vital hygiene factor nowadays.

4. User-inclined game-Jockey

Much has been talked and chanted about how usability has morphed from a nice-to-have ribbon to a mission-critical spine in IT applications. User-empathy has changed its shades and degrees over the years. What more, in 2017, the majority of all new user-facing applications will exhibit gamified-social-mobile fusion, like Gartner pointed out in a report. It adds how three key feature sets (social, mobile and gamification) are already emerging in the marketplace in user-facing applications. These features increase the attractiveness, usability and effectiveness of the applications they are found in, it stresses. Over the next five years, these three feature sets will continue to co-emerge and fuse into a superset, such that, by 2017, they will appear in the majority of user-oriented applications and apps; and that, definitely means a tougher job for CIOs than what they already do.

5. Interior Designer

It's not as easy as changing the curtains or deciding which colour looks best on which wall. It means a lot of IT overhaul, project re-evaluations, license reconnaissance and long-term investment reckonings. For instance, Forrester has recently witnessed large ERP implementations, as well as modernization projects for their IT infrastructure assets. These investments, as it projects, will continue to drive growth in 2013 in the private sector side of the market. The public sector represents a significant growth opportunity for India's IT spending growth too.

6. CMO's adjacent

Even if CMOs are being touted as the rivals to watch out for, CIOs have started recognizing that the pressure on an IT department to turn from a cost centre to a revenue centre is only going to accentuate ahead. IT can no longer be complacent with running all the engines well. It has to also have a passenger-bound approach to steering the ship on the right track. From customer-centric applications, faster IT delivery nodes, last-mile cover-up and exceptional efficiency USPs; IT is going to play a much more front-burner role about a business.

7. The Fire Fighter

And yet, CIOs can not afford to have any light-off situations. Downtime costs dearly today. IT emergencies have to be tackled with the same agility and strategic-discretion as donning all the other hats mentioned above. Keeping the lights on may seem simple but it counts a lot even though it may still be a thankless job and often latent unless IT help desk's alarms are rushed for.

8. Hunter

Another interesting prognosis by analysts like Gartner spell out that as needs and opportunities evolve, more CIOs will find themselves leading in areas outside of traditional IT. Notably enough, in addition to their tending role, they are starting to assume responsibility for hunting for digital opportunities and harvesting value. Sixty-seven per cent of CIOs surveyed in a Gartner study have shown significant leadership responsibilities outside of IT, with only 33 per cent having no other such responsibilities. This situation contrasts sharply with 2008, when almost half of CIOs had no responsibilities outside of IT.

9. Chef

It just won't do to let trends like Cloud or BYOD eat their way into one's territory and watch helplessly. May be it's a cue that IT has to think beyond its comfort zones before something else threatens to cannibalise the IT function per se. That will mean thinking out of a customer's shoes and plug matters wherever it pinches. In other words, converting customer problem areas, hitherto not cognizant to others, into IT-enabled solutions; and making some business proposition along the way. One role that catches one's eye immediately when Gartner identified four dominant futures for IT in the organization; is that of IT as a Global Service Provider. IT organization can change into an expanded and integrated shared-service unit that runs like a business, delivering IT services and enterprise business processes.

Or IT as a business provider where information is the business's explicit product or at least is inseparable from its product. It's not hard to imagine that the business is structured around information flow (not process or function) and the IT organization innovates within the value chain, rather than just enabling the supporting services found in every business.

10. Being a super-mom, anytime, anywhere

An IT in need, is IT indeed. But CIO has to look and think beyond, and be there all the time, whenever a crisis, no matter, how small or big, strikes. Like they rightly say, if evolution really works, how come mothers still have two hands? Ask a CIO may be.