The Emerging — and Accelerating — New Role of the CIO in 2022

CIOs have never been more central to the future of business than they are right now. As IDG’s 2022 State of the CIO study puts it, they must guide a “swing back to foundational and IT governance work … as a part of the natural cycle of technology-driven business … [while] continuing their outsized role in business transformation.” They must thread the needle between the past, the present and the future.

And let’s not understate the challenges CIOs face daily: mounting cybersecurity threats, disparate LoB requirements, work-from-home factors and a variety of other pressures that make their jobs complex and layered. In 2021 and 2022, IDG’s aforementioned study found, keeping pace with these challenges meant a decrease in overall CIO time spent on business strategy. In fact, a vast majority of respondents – 76 % - underscored the difficulty in striking the right balance between business innovation and operational excellence.

76%: that’s a big number. And while I do not doubt the difficulty, I do question the implied impact. I talk with CIOs and their teams every day – and while they are certainly balancing these incredible challenges, they’re also not letting them hold back their plans. They are pushing forward, with impressive vigor and determination. The realities that COVID laid bare – whether positive or difficult for their industries – changed the equation, and I see time and again a drive to keep their transformation on track.

There’s no one size fits all approach, but I can trace four clear philosophies amongst these teams who are finding real ways to balance business innovation and operational excellence:

1. Effective cloud-based thinking — and actions — will continually benefit companies in ways well beyond operational improvement, management and cost savings. Whether on a local, regional, national or global scale, CIOs with a clear cloud strategy and proven solutions can count on greater organizational stability, progress and competitive edge. As CIOs strive to overcome hiring and retention challenges, it should also come as no surprise that maintaining a legacy IT environment will make the effort much more arduous. Today’s IT talent is going cloud-centric, and on the SAP front, that means intelligent enterprises powered by SAP S/4HANA. This evolution will not only make it easier to hire leading talent, but to run companies more successfully overall, wherever they operate. At SAP, we’re committed to building cloud solutions that streamline and optimize the end-to-end digital transformation of customers — as well as SAP’s own future.
2. ?IT teams are turning over, but “slowing down” is not an option. The virtual heroics of internal IT personnel and external partners over the past couple of years certainly reflects an impressive resilience. And people are energized about what they can accomplish in the toughest of times and don’t necessarily want to slow down. Perceptions of personal productivity, efficiency and work-life balance are of paramount importance. So, for CIOs, now shouldn’t be the time to pause, reconsider, and get the digital ball rolling again later. With business owners more acutely aware of the consequences of not being digitalized enough, you’ll likely increase the probability for success if you keep going now. Make your team feel their close connection to transformation at your company by continually recognizing, reinforcing and rewarding their contributions. It will undoubtedly help support retention.?
3. ?The new hybrid work reality creates a larger talent pool to draw from, and it will be instrumental in addressing the growing spectrum of IT needs. Last year’s accelerated pace of digital transformation included many companies jumping into the fray for the first time, often with shorter-term concerns of the utmost importance. Those challenges typically called for different skillsets and activities to keep operations afloat and compliant with emerging regulations and evolving customer and employee expectations. Operational and governance aspects of that recent past are still on CIO plates today. Besides enabling and securing hybrid work environments, IT faced (and still faces) other new pandemic-related demands, such as those associated with supply-chain shortages. Successful organizations aren’t overlooking opportunities to connect these dots as they continually search for ways to make their team’s innovations possible and repeatable.
4. ?Today’s “elevated” role of CIOs can lead to quicker achievement of end-to-end digital transformation objectives. As they proved their mettle and made critical contributions in the pandemic’s wake, CIO leaders gained more “visibility and impact that’s expected to continue,” according to IDG’s study. The research found that 74 percent of CIOs agree with this statement, while their LoB counterparts were in even higher agreement (78 percent). Although 2022 has its share of headwinds, there’s not really a question about whether CIOs will drive digital transformation; it’s more a matter of how quickly. Roadmaps can now gain more definitive traction given the greater sense of urgency from the top down. CIOs are in an ideal position to capitalize, as proof points abound, and the pandemic remains a catalyst for broader change versus the “piecemeal” efforts that characterized much of the immediate response.