Strategic Priorities for CIOs in the “New Normal”

Amidst the pandemic's aftermath, the "new normal" introduced uncertainty across the global landscape. Businesses worldwide faced unprecedented challenges and swiftly embraced digital technologies to enable remote work within a hybrid "work-from-anywhere" model.

However, this rapid transition led to challenges in seamless technology adoption, with over 59% of digital transformation initiatives taking too long or exceeding budgets, as revealed by a Gartner survey. Additionally, the shift to remote work exposed enterprises to increased cybersecurity threats from unsecured networks, unguarded cloud estates, and expanded threat landscapes.

Due to these factors, we see that the key strategic priorities in 2023 and the near future for CIOs globally are to prioritize digital initiatives that focus on cost optimization and efficiency, customer experience, and business growth.

In the image shown below are some of the key technologies that will be implemented by enterprises by 2025 according to Gartner research.

Enterprises are laser-focused on adopting cutting-edge technologies by 2025, with AIOps, Cloud, 5G, and SASE taking center stage. These transformative forces aim to enhance efficiency, optimize costs, and elevate the customer experience. In addition to the top 5 priorities, areas like Application modernization, Hyper-Automation, and Integrated Technologies Architecture further capture attention, fueling the drive toward innovation and success.

To ensure that the adoption of these technologies reaps the right outcomes and benefits to the business at the right time, CIOs need to do these 4 things while planning their digital initiatives.

1. Identify, assess, and prioritize digital initiatives based on their impact on business outcomes and growth. Develop a roadmap for the digital initiatives based on the dependencies and prioritize high-impact initiatives first.
2. Finding the right technology and services partners for digital initiatives. Partners with a digital-first mindset focused on driving business outcomes and enabling growth over meeting SLA expectations. Alignment with partners on the strategic roadmap and objectives ensures clarity and communication with all stakeholders.
3. Identify and map leading and lagging indicators of progress from a business and technology standpoint to measure and track the progress of digital transformation initiatives. The technology and business outcomes metrics should be correlated to measure the impact of technology benefits on business outcomes.
4. Focus on talent acquisition and retention in niche areas and areas around which digital initiatives are implemented. Leveraging talent through intra-organization initiatives helps address the skill gap internally along with external hiring, hackathons, etc. can help address the skill gap unconventionally.

CIOs should continuously reassess and realign their digital initiatives to stay current with technology advances and competition and find digital partners who can keep pace with the dynamic changes and deliver the right business outcomes through digital initiatives.

About the Author

Sujay Singh is a Program and Marketing Manager at Microland and works on Services Marketing across Networks, Cloud & DC, Cybersecurity, and Platforms. Sujay has over 7 years of experience in Business Management, Marketing, Product Development, and Pre-Sales. Sujay is a Computer Science Engineering graduate with an MBA specializing in Product Strategy and Management, Operations, and Data Analytics. His interests include reading, gaming, photography, and Formula 1.