10 things that will keep CIOs awake at night in 2018

In the current age of digitization and emerging technologies, CIOs are always under the spotlight. Competitive markets, shifting economic trends and constrained budgets have put them in the hot seat. The dawn of new year brings with it many opportunities as well as challenges that test the mettle of CIOs. They have to constantly adapt, evolve and learn while managing ever-increasing responsibilities in their portfolio.

The best CIOs in business stay ahead of the game, are aware of what to expect in the foreseeable future and have a game plan ready. Give yourself the advantage of foresight and be aware of the challenges 2018 is going to usher in. It is always good to be prepared. Let’s see the top 10 things that will keep CIOs awake at night in 2018

1. Growing Customer Expectations

Rapid advancement and adoption of technologies especially smartphones have empowered the consumers like never before. Technology has enabled businesses to grow exponentially but has equally raised the expectations of their customers. Modern customers want the best and they want it instantly, be it products, services, or support. When considering services like live support, the difference between 30 seconds and 2 minutes is all it takes to lose a customer.

With IT playing a major role in end to end customer journey, CIOs have become responsible for providing an exalting customer experience. Obtaining and retaining customers today is like a relationship, it demands constant communication with a personalized touch. CIOs must be hyperactive and enable swift communication via multiple channels including email, live chat, video and voice calls, texts and popular social media platforms. Customers want value delivered before they make a purchase and their growing expectations are bound to keep CIOs on their toes for sure.

2. Perfecting the “Mobile First”

With the number of internet users on smartphones already surpassing desktop users, smartphones have become the central point around which organizations have to devise their business strategies and marketing campaigns. It is not just consumers’ mobile experience that matters. Internal working of the organizations is also moving to smartphones and phablets and this demands mobile software interfaces designed for employees that are easy to use and enhance productivity.

Employees have their own preferred devices and designing efficient interfaces to provide enriching experience across multiple vendor devices and platforms will require dedicated infrastructure and proper strategizing. Enterprise mobility to allow the employees freedom to work wherever and whenever is another aspect that must be considered. Designing dedicated mobile interfaces will bring its own challenges and CIOs will need to bring their A-game on the “Mobile First” front.

3. Automation Everywhere

Automation is a dream come true for all CIOs. It saves time, improves efficiency, provides faster deployment and allows easy adaptation and upgrading. It may be applied across different spheres in the organization including processes, production, and development. But it brings challenges for CIOs in the form of pressure to improve infrastructure and efficiency, innovating constantly and integrating enterprise solutions seamlessly. CIOs will have to make three big decisions regarding automation in the near future:

· What to Deploy – Depending on whether task involves structured data or unstructured data.

· Where to Deploy – Identifying the areas that will gain maximum benefit from automation.

· How to Deploy – Finding an end-to-end approach that produces maximum benefits for the entire organization.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) allows to automate repetitive business processes and eliminates the need for human intervention. Areas that RPA can be implemented include transaction processing, data updation and communication. This allows the workforce of the organization to focus on high priority tasks. Automation significantly reduces the expenditure on these mundane tasks while also increasing the turnaround time for business processes.

Besides these, the CIOs will have to consider adoption of new development frameworks such as Agile and DevOps while ensuring faster data analysis techniques that provide insights for making day-to-day and important business decisions.

4. Artificial Intelligence as Differentiator

Artificial Intelligence has advanced to a point where the future of the organizations depends on how invested they are in AI technologies. Artificial Intelligence is bound to impact business modeling, decision making, market strategizing, customer experience and other spheres and will have to be integrated with all applications of the company to an extent. As per a survey by Gartner, 59% of companies are already working on their strategies for implementing AI with platforms available from leading vendors.

Implementation of machine learning will be an integral part of AI and will improve workforce efficiency and quality of services provided. Now is the right time to lay a foundation for artificial intelligence activities of future. CIOs will play a major role in decisions regarding the best algorithms that can be employed, selection of right tools, data preparation and integrating IT development activities with other business departments.

5. Getting into BlockChains

BlockChains technology is the next big thing that can tumble the superpowers of the world while giving even more control to the consumers. Though relatively new, the technology has the potential to alter the landscape of business operations, marketing, and data security. It has the capability of storing transaction records originating from multiple sources as interlinked blocks in a ledger and helps to recognize any unauthorized modification of data and keeps them cryptographically secure.

BlockChains’s potential uses include user authentication, credential verification and licensing without the intervention of IT department reducing their workload and subsequently infrastructure required. Information security will also be boosted as unauthorized access detection and prevention will be easier. Emerging popularity of cryptocurrencies will significantly impact financial transactions and the spending habits of consumers. Surging popularity of BlockChain requires that CIOs constantly update themselves regarding the new developments in the field and be ready with a strategy that can help them tap into its potential and leverage it to the advantage of their organizations.

6. Power of Data

In today’s digital business world, data is everything. If technology has empowered consumers, it has presented an equal opportunity to business organizations in the form of data analysis and insights. The what, when and who of any decision to be made in an organization whether regarding a business strategy or a marketing campaign is based on data.

Every organization, whether new or established ones is jumping the bandwagon to acquire more data but few of them know how to leverage this data for competitive business advantage. Companies that have invested in data analytics and insights have reaped rich dividends in the form of increased revenues and a higher level of customer satisfaction and retention. It even helps to improve the performance of the employees by analyzing their engagement level and altering interfaces and designing training programs based on the derived information.

Data analysis plays an essential role in target marketing, consumer segmentation and launch of new products and their success. With ever-increasing dependence on data CIOs are surely going to burn the midnight oil managing the exponentially increasing amount of data, identifying its accuracy, and using insight and analytics tools to derive useful information for staying ahead of the competition.

7. Adopting Voice & Visual Technologies

Recent times have witnessed the emergence of multiple technologies that are going to be big game changers. Besides BlockChain, voice-driven devices and visual technologies including AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) and IOT (Internet of Things), are going to impact businesses and consumers alike. Voice-driven AI platforms are already a part of smartphones from major vendors.

This shift into sci-fi era will further increase the dependence of marketing and HR teams on the IT department adding additional roles and responsibilities to the CIOs’ portfolio. These technologies will impact they way both consumers and employees interact with the applications and tools employed and their user experience.

Leading organizations across the globe realize the potential of the upcoming voice and visual technologies and already have their teams already working on solutions based on them. Every business in every domain will have to get into the AR and VR world or else it may get left behind and perish into oblivion. At the center of this change are CIOs who will not only have to adopt and familiarize themselves with the previously mentioned technologies, they must be ready with a game plan when these become mainstream.

8. Finding & Keeping the True Talent

Gone are the days when HR department was the sole entity responsible for making the hiring decisions in an organization. With all aspects of business becoming more dependent on technology the CIOs of the organizations are equally responsible for finding individuals with required talents.

The success of the business is directly proportional to the skill level of its employees. Forrester conducted a study that found that over 93% businesses lack employees with required skills. Organizations today need data scientists and experts with AI and machine learning skills. Finding the right talent having the required experience who is also willing to adapt, learn, and evolve with continually changing business requirements will be up to CIOs.

Retaining talented individuals is as hard as finding the right people if not more. The environment of the organization plays a vital role in job satisfaction level of the employees. With increasing interdependence of different departments in the organizations, the CIOs have to ensure that teams from all department gel well and work together efficiently. They have to encourage every member of the team and provide an environment that helps them to grow and achieve their desired level of contentment.

Fulfilling the skill gap with right talent will demand CIOs have a vision of trends and technologies to come while the cutthroat competition for limited talent pool will prevent them from resting on their laurels even for a second.

9. Shrinking Budgets

CIOs have always been dealing with continuously shrinking budgets and the new year will see the cash allocation restricted further. Add to the fact new avenues that demand budget allocation such as analytics and digitalization, there is a constant pressure on CIOs to produce more result with fewer resources.

Innovation in today’s time is mandatory and not an option. A study conducted by Forrester revealed that 70% of companies that made it to Fortune 1000 list a decade ago are no longer in existence. The continuous innovation is another aspect that CIOs have to balance with other IT spending.

A few popular technologies can give CIOs breathing space and can aid in their budget allocation. Cloud technology is becoming mainstream and can reduce the expenditure required for system maintenance which accounts for a major portion of IT spending. CIOs will be required to find the right balance between onsite hardware and cloud to guarantee maximum performance and reliability while being economical. Automation and AI can lower the operating expenses by improving the efficiency of systems and processes.

10. Keeping the balance between Security & Accessibility

Having access to a vast amount of information available at fingertips is a privilege that gives an unprecedented advantage, but it also brings a responsibility to keep the information secure from unseen threats and new vulnerabilities arising every day. And it’s not just that threats originate from outside the organizations. Insiders are more likely to pose security risks as found in an IBM study wherein every 6 out of 10 deliberate security attacks were carried out by employees of the organization.

The other aspect of safety is ease of accessibility of the data and concerned interfaces. Securing data access cannot come at the expense of reduced accessibility and speed as it will lead to the inefficient functioning and reduce the productivity of personnel. This is especially true for consumer accessible data and any delay or difficulty will downgrade user experience and may lead to loss of customers and revenue.

CIOs will be constantly challenged in the new year to maintain a balance between safeguarding company and consumer data from ever arising threats and ensuring they are easily accessible round the clock.

 Summary

The business world will go through a seismic shift in the coming years due to emerging IT trends and CIOs will have to face the maximum brunt. These challenges are going to be testing and addressing them must be a top priority of every CIO and IT leader. They will have to find ways to keep the business afloat while driving innovation through a sea of changes. But in the end, it will be worth it for every challenge they see through ultimately adds to their value and that of their organization.

Happy New Year 2018 to all my CIO friends…May all your IT initiatives be successful this year :)