Technology development has accelerated in recent years, affecting both the consumers’ lives and the way businesses operate. While the Baby Boomer generation originally embraced the possibility of IT almost for its own sake, an ethos which has informed CIOs of that generation, the primary pressure for following generations is to turn IT to the business’s advantage in order to remain competitive. When the current generation, weaned on the iPad and cloud, become the 21st century’s newest crop of CIOs, how will they be making IT decisions?
IT decisions must keep cost at the heart of decisions
In an ever-changing world of IT, the one constant for the successful CIO to keep under control will be cost. As organisations balance profitability and competitiveness, delivering IT that helps the business do its job, at the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and ultimately providing the best return on investment will be at the heart of the CIO’s function. With an ever-larger segment of businesses’ costs being taken up by IT, the drive towards minimising costs and improving the profitability of services will force organisations to find new efficiencies. The most highly-valued CIOs will demonstrate a clear control of costs.
Consumer experiences now will shape expectations tomorrow
Recent generations see IT as a commodity they can access on demand: family photos are stored on Flickr, films are watched via Netflix and shopping is done via Amazon. At the same time, a "freemium" model is an increasingly popular way of providing consumer services: free or low-cost basic services that are supplemented by advertising or expensive add-ons. As these generations rise to the role of CIO, they will expect their business IT to operate very much like those cloud-centric services they are already used to. However, a service model that is more convenient for the consumer isn’t necessarily the best option for the business. The most successful CIOs will be those that can recognise this and place financial sense, rather than their own expectations, at the base of any decisions.
Higher stakes mean harsher judgement
As expenditure on IT grows, so it will be under much greater scrutiny. Costs and results will be scrutinised to ensure that the business is getting the best possible value. Because of this, the CIO must be able to justify every decision they make: whether planning and implementing brand new projects or supporting the day-to-day operations of IT services. CIOs of the future will have little margin for error; meaning they must predict the effects on performance and operating costs of any changes to the IT environment, and demonstrate how the investments and decisions they make will benefit the business.
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IT will be constantly evolving
The current generation of cloud-weaned users may see the cloud as the ultimate good when they mature to becoming the CIO of tomorrow, but the cloud is not the ultimate evolution of IT. Technology will continue to develop and change, often in entirely unexpected directions. The risk is that, as IT evolves, new technologies and methods of accessing IT will be seen as one-size-fits-all solutions, when in reality the older ways are more appropriate. We are already seeing this in the early 21st century, where businesses will place IT services in the public cloud without understanding whether it will truly save on costs, especially when in-house data centre space is then left empty and is not taken into account. Understanding how different functions are delivered to the business, and the costs (and risks) involved, will be key to managing whether IT is delivered on-premise, over the cloud, or in ways yet to be discovered.
CFOs’ expectations will also move with the times
The CIO is not the only role that will change with the new generation. The CIO will become a much more cost-focused position as the importance of and investment in IT grow, with technology consuming more of the business’s budget. This means IT will also become increasingly important to CFOs, who will both see it as a significant part of their budget and are far more likely to have grown up technology-literate. This means the CFO and CIO’s roles will likely become much closer, as both will aim to focus resources in the way which most benefits the business. In this environment, being able to clearly communicate with the CFO and demonstrate the effects of investment will be crucial to CIOs. Whether supporting their own decisions or guiding other executives down the best possible investment path, this clarity of communication will be a critical skill for the 21st-century CIO.
The next generations of CIO will have powerful tools at their disposal. Yet these will come with the need for hard decisions – any one of which could potentially make or break the business. Those that can take control of costs, and fully understand and verify the effects of any decision, will be best placed to help their organisations succeed in the 21st century.
