Company Tech emerges as key business leader

After the rapid growth of collaboration apps and business platforms over the past two years — from the early stages of remote work to the rapid transition to cloud computing — most companies’ top goals are no longer accessible without digital devices, according to research firm McKinsey & The company said in a recent report.

Already, many CIOs are finding themselves at the center of corporate decision-making like never before, developing sales, marketing and other core business strategies — a long way from backroom IT hubs.

“The role of the CIO is seeing a shift from the traditional delivery of information-technology services to a more strategic role focused on meeting business objectives,” said Scott Case, CIO, Truist Financial Corp., a Charlotte, NC-based retail bank . With a net worth of over $500 billion.

Scott, a 25-year veteran of enterprise IT, said technology is now at the forefront of the company’s banking strategy and a key driver of several key focus areas, including customer satisfaction, operational effectiveness, risk management, operational leverage and shareholder return. , among others.

Sharon Mandel, CIO and senior vice president of software firm Juniper Networks Inc., said she still relishes traditional aspects of the job, such as maintaining systems and cybersecurity. But she now works closely with executives in divisions outside of tech to drive a “value-creation business model.”

As VMware Inc. CIO Jason Conyard says: “As is the case with many IT teams, we are not the IT departments of tomorrow.”

Research firm International Data Corp. estimates that by 2023, 60% of CIOs in companies around the world will be measured primarily for their ability to create new business models and revenue streams through enterprisewide collaborations.

“It took the pandemic to convince key offices and corporate boards that technical decisions are business decisions,” said Sunny Gupta, co-founder and chief executive officer of Bellevue, Wash.-based software firm Apptio Inc., and a board member at TBM. Council, a non-profit CIO trade group.

Jeff Wong, Global Chief Innovation Officer, Ernst & Young LLP, said technology, data and innovative software such as artificial intelligence have rapidly become the focus of business strategy. “They are not only performing supporting functions, but are also shaping the strategic future of businesses,” said Mr. Wong. In this way, he said, CIOs today play an important role in where their company is headed in the next five to 10 years.

“Covid has given CIOs some room to revisit infrastructure and office-related projects,” said David Burden, CIO of ForgeRock Inc., a San Francisco-based company. Cloud. On top of that, Mr Burden said, the crisis enabled him to “prove the value of IT as an innovation hub, business innovator and important supporter of employee productivity.”

Capital One Financial Corp CIO Rob Alexander said that with the rapid spread and spread of technology during the pandemic, going forward, business-line leaders will seek more tech heads than ever to bring high-level problem-solving skills. Be patient in the application of these new technologies.

“Regardless of the industry, IT roles have grown in demand even more over the past year,” said Jo-Ann Depas Olsowski, CIO and executive vice president of business software company Salesforce.com Inc. imagined,” she said.

Ms. DePass Olsowski said providing the digital backbone for the company’s long-term hybrid-work strategy, while re-imagining how workers and teams in the business can most effectively collaborate with customers, partners and associates Huh.

Cloud-based customer support provider, Zendesk Inc. Colleen Berube, CIO and senior vice president for operations, said such efforts to enable businesses to operate remotely have made CIOs more visible in most organizations — underlining how important they are to the business. Huh. software services.

“What has changed rapidly over the past year is that I am now more people-focused than ever,” Ms. Berub said. “As a CIO, I have been given a unique vantage point that enables me to look across the company and make strategic decisions with the best intentions of the company in mind,” she said.

SAP SE CIO Florian Roth said the emerging role of CIO reflects the changing ways of doing business in an increasingly digital world – changes that were thrown into high gear by the pandemic.

“There is an industrywide consensus among CIOs that it will not be enough for companies to simply adopt new technologies,” Mr. Roth said. Change and innovation should be approached strategically and across the organization, he said.

Service Now Inc. CIO Chris Bedi said the result is that CIOs are no longer being judged solely on the success of individual IT deployments. Our results with respect to the overall business,” he said.

Cambridge, Mass.-based software company Pegasystems Inc. “Everybody has figured out how to keep the system up and running, the email flow and the meetings going,” said David Vidoni, vice president of IT in the US. “If they haven’t, they probably aren’t in business now,” he said.

This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed