A year of crises and change has put the CIO in a central role, with new priorities on top of old responsibilities. As Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard puts it, “The movement to the cloud hasn’t freed us totally from having to worry about capacity and servers and networks, but we’re also now worried about solving business problems with the right technology.”
Andrew Wilson, CDO of Microsoft — and former CIO of Accenture — agrees. “Now the CIO is speaking to the main board,” he says, and “tasked with a digital transformation agenda, which is directly relevant to business outcomes.”
With this new role comes new KPIs. Jason Oliver, Director of IT Services for the University of Sussex, notes how his have changed from traditional metrics around performance and uptime to business-focused KPIs around student numbers, sustainability, and research grants.
“It really demonstrates the change in emphasis in the role of the CIO,” he says. “It’s no longer just about physical IT — it’s more inclusive and more diverse. It aligns with how pervasive technology is across institutions and how it underpins the way in which they operate.”
Jay Ferro, CIO at ERT feels this shift is critical. “I think the best CIOs in the world are business leaders first and technologists second,” he says. “CIOs and IT don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist to drive a company’s mission forward.”
It’s no longer enough for CIOs and other tech executives to understand how technology works, they need to be able to communicate its business potential. David McGrath, CDO of Clubs Australia feels it’s partly about storytelling; how you “articulate the complex quite quickly” to a board that isn’t necessarily digital savvy.
“They understand the benefits that transformation will bring to their organization, but they need someone to be able to help them navigate through it.”
Bernd Preuschoff, CDO of the Uvex Group agrees, explaining that while your CEO might not care about a new operating system or laptop deployment, they do care about the workforce being efficient. We’ve seen this at work during the pandemic, as CEOs and the board have come to see the CIO as a force for business continuity during a seismic shift towards remote working. Preuschoff believes that by promoting positive change and highlighting the potential of IT for transformation, “we can change the way we tell our story and we can change the narrative of IT.”
For Microsoft’s Andrew Wilson, CIOs "need to be a coach and communicator”, driving engagement with business leaders across every department. Wilson picks out the CFO, not just because they control budgets and resources, but because they can promote recognition of technology’s transformative power. HR, meanwhile, is crucial both for recruiting and retaining IT talent, and because it’s “critical as a key stakeholder and orchestrator.”
Aline Hayes, Director of Technical Transformation, EMEA, Experian, suggests that CIOs work closely with business leaders, but also with the teams working for them. Not only does it help if they understand the details of any project but they can tell you how to communicate from their perspective. A deputy CFO or management accountant, for example, can help you “present what you’re talking about in a way that will help a financial audience connect.”
Most of all, CIOs need to cultivate relationships with the CMO, because, while their priorities may differ, it’s the combination of data-driven systems and customer experience innovations that truly drives the business forward.
CMO Vineet Mehra and CIO Francesco Tinto have worked together to transform the customer experience at Walgreens Boots Alliance. Find out how they broke down silos and put the customer at the center.
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