Gartner Survey of More Than 3,000 CIOs Confirms the Changing Role of the Chief Information Officer

Gartner Survey of More
Than 3,000 CIOs Confirms the Changing Role of the Chief Information Officer

SINGAPORE, October 3, 2017 — Digitalization and technological innovation are changing
the nature of the job of the CIO. Leaders are rapidly scaling their digital businesses,
making the remainder of this year and 2018 a defining moment for CIOs who don’t
want to be left behind. Gartner, Inc.’s annual global survey of CIOs showed
that the CIO role is transitioning from delivery executive to business
executive, from controlling cost and engineering processes, to driving revenue
and exploiting data.

Gartner analysts
presented the survey findings during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place
here through Thursday. The 2018 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey gathered
data from a record number of 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries and all
major industries, representing approximately $13 trillion in revenue/public
sector budgets and $277 billion in IT spending. For the purposes of the survey,
respondents were categorized as top, typical and trailing performers in
digitalization.

The survey results
show that 95 percent of CIOs expect their jobs to change or be remixed due to
digitalization. While world-class IT delivery management is a given, it will
take up less and less of the CIO’s time. Respondents believe that the two
biggest transformations in the CIO role will be becoming a change leader,
followed by assuming increased and broader responsibilities and capabilities.
Inevitably, the job of CIO will extend beyond the traditional delivery roles to
other areas of the business, such as innovation management and talent
development.

“The
CIO’s role must grow and develop as digital business spreads, and disruptive
technologies, including intelligent machines and advanced analytics, reach the
masses,” said Andy Rowsell-Jones, vice president and
distinguished analyst at Gartner. “While
delivery is still a part of the job, much greater emphasis is being placed on
attaining a far broader set of business objectives.”

Respond to Trends

The survey showed that a majority of CIOs say that technology
trends, specifically cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI),
will significantly change how they do their jobs in the near future.
Cybersecurity continues to threaten the global landscape in 2018, and 95
percent of CIOs surveyed said they expect cybersecurity threats to increase and
impact their organization.

“In response to
these concerns, the survey found that digital security ranks
high on the CIO agenda as 35 percent of respondents said they have already
invested and deployed some aspect of digital security, and 36 percent are in
the process of planning to implement some form of digital security,” said
Mr. Rowsell-Jones. “CIOs are also increasingly adopting AI in their organizations.
Predominantly, AI is being used initially, either to boost the customer
experience or to fight fraud.”

CIOs surveyed rank AI, followed by digital security and the
Internet of Things (IoT), as the most problematic technologies to implement.
Survey respondents agree that the most common pain point is the fact that these
technologies, particularly AI, demand new skills, some of
which can be hard to find.

The survey found that growth is the No. 1 CIO priority for 2018,
as reported by 26 percent of CIOs. The use of digitized products and services
is expected to drive new forms of revenue, business value and engagement of
customers and citizens. The challenge for CIOs is how to grow it to deliver
economies of scope and scale.

“CIOs are on the road from digital experimentation to
digital scaling,” said Mr. Rowsell-Jones. “However, a wall exists
between those early digital experiments and pilots, and those that have
achieved digital scale. Perhaps the biggest brick in that wall is
organizational culture. CIOs need to identify the cultural behaviors that
currently exist and what the future state vision is. In doing so, they must
recognize existing cultural strengths and position cultural change as ‘the next
chapter,’ rather than a massive overhaul, to respect employees’ contributions
and invite them to come along on the journey.”

Define the role – focus attention beyond IT

At least 84 percent of top CIOs surveyed have responsibility for
areas of the business outside traditional IT. The most common are innovation and transformation.
When asked about their success criteria, top CIOs report they are already close
to the ideal split where more focus of their performance metrics is on business
outcomes rather than IT delivery. Based on the top CIOs’ responses, the ideal
balance is 56 percent of metrics related to business outcomes, such as revenue
growth, business margins and influencing business strategy, and 44 percent
related to IT delivery.

The survey found that CIOs are spending more time on the
business executive elements of their jobs compared with three years ago. In
fact, CIOs from top performing organizations are spending up to four days more
on executive leadership. The more mature an enterprise’s digital business is,
the more likely the CIO will report to the CEO.

In a change from previous surveys, respondents were asked to
name the top differentiating technologies (in previous years they were asked
about investment levels). Business intelligence (BI) and
analytics still retain the top spot on the list, with top
performers most likely to consider them strategic.

“This new focus represents an opportunity for the CIO to
become more deeply involved in this differentiating technology,” said Mr.
Rowsell-Jones. “Data and insight drive the creation, delivery and life
cycle of digital products and services. Flow of information in the context of
user interactions leads to better engagement and value creation for all
parties. Analytics connect the CIO and the IT organization to far-flung parts
of the organization where they can cultivate new relationships.”

Implement the new role

Seventy-nine percent of CIOs report that digital business is
making their IT organizations more “change-ready,” which suggests
that now is a good time to implement change to the IT organizations, and, in
turn, should make the transition to the new job of the CIO easier.

The first part of the new job of the CIO is to build the
required bench strength to scale the enterprise’s digital business through
support for the digital ecosystem. This means hiring new resources to put in
place the right digital team structures. Some CIOs favor a separate digital
team while others make digitalization part of the day job of IT and the
enterprise. However, 71 percent of the top performers have a separate digital
team to help them scale their digitalization efforts. The most common structure
for these teams is to report to the CIO, although the biggest difference
between the top performers and their peers is in the CEO reporting relationship
of these teams.

“The effects of
digitalization are profound. The impact on the job of CIO and on the IT
organization itself should not be underestimated,” said Mr. Rowsell-Jones.
“In this new world, CIO success is not based on what they build, but the
services that they integrate. The IT organization will move from manufacturer
to buyer, and the CIO will become an expert orchestrator of services. The real
finding though is that this is happening now, today. CIOs must start scaling
their digital business and changing their own jobs with it now.”

Gartner clients can
learn more in the report “The 2018 CIO Agenda: Mastering the
New Job of the CIO.”

About Gartner
Symposium/ITxpo

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world’s most important
gathering of CIOs and senior IT leaders, uniting a global community of CIOs
with the tools and strategies to help them lead the next generation of IT and
achieve business outcomes. More than 23,000 CIOs, senior business and IT
leaders worldwide will gather for the insights they need to ensure that their
IT initiatives are key contributors to, and drivers of, their enterprise’s
success.

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