The role and responsibilities of the CIO have changed somewhat over recent months, with the catalyst being the pandemic which caused a fundamental shift in the way businesses operated. Marcelo Di Rosa, Founder and CEO of Atlantic Technologies, discusses some of the changes to the role of the post-pandemic CIO and what’s required to ensure they continue contributing to shaping the future of tech.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Atlantic Technologies. It has been a time where we have looked back at how the role of the CIO has changed, considering the Internet was in its infancy to both the business world and public when we formed the company.
Today, the business world tends to think more about the cloud, than simply the Internet and it is a key technology in today’s Digital Transformation projects.
In recent years, the CIO has played a greater role than ever before in helping organisations to address the business challenges of the day, while also accelerating broader strategic digitisation efforts. In recent years, we have been through some testing times and now find ourselves in a new economic and social environment, where the CIO is being recognised as the real strategic business driver, not just technologist, that we’ve always known them to be.
It’s no longer a question of deciding which technology a company needs, but of fully understanding the business strategy and anticipating new market trends to increase the competitiveness of the business – and then translating it into a technology roadmap. Today and looking forward, companies need CIOs who are agile, visionary, interactive and enablers of new business opportunities.
CIOs are considering new investments that will deliver the efficiency, speed and productivity needed to operate a hybrid workplace as part of this new environment. This is just one example of the challenge of planning for the future.
Taking on this new role will demand new skills of the CIO; complementing technical and leadership skills with communication and relationship qualities. This will be an essential element in delivering technology solutions that employees and customers can embrace. Choosing those technology solutions is rarely easy, however. Today’s CIO not only needs to be abreast of today’s technology, but looking to those that are evolving to decipher what they mean and how they can be applied to the business strategy.
At Atlantic, we too have faced many of these challenges as we worked to help our customers achieve their Digital Transformation goals. Understanding the technology is one thing, but we have created new teams and working practices to ensure we can advise customers on how to reach their own business goals through the technology available.
Priorities and emerging technologies
Current and emerging technologies are not only going to help businesses build the resilience and agility they need, but they will also be enablers for vastly improved customer experiences. Here is my take on the technologies CIOs need to embrace in order to remain agile and adaptive to ever-changing external business influences.
Cloud technology
Cloud-based systems may be nothing new, but the richness of capabilities and proven reliability, means that businesses can use them extensively to meet their business and technology needs. The cloud can be used to rapidly deploy new applications across an organisation, centralise information securely and give access to business applications from anywhere. It will be imperative for CIOs to provide cloud-based tools to enable employees to collaborate and always be efficient, even remotely. One of the key advantages of cloud systems is that they offer companies a level of resilience that they could not possibly fund for an on-site infrastructure, which is essential in today’s business environment.
Cloud technology allows businesses to work smarter, rather than harder, to achieve desired outcomes – whether they be rapidly deploying new services to help employees be more productive or providing new customer experiences. A cloud application provider is also working to constantly improve the services and applications they offer, with each update instantly available to every user worldwide.
AI and chatbots
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving huge new benefits for businesses in many ways. The ability to automate customer service, offer real-time feedback to customers and user requests, are just some of the ways chatbots are helping businesses. The AI technology in chatbots has been improving greatly and has meant that customers are growing to accept – and in some cases prefer – the efficiency and effectiveness of automated chatbot support.
Investments in automation and AI will grow at a dizzying pace. In fact, IDC predicts that global spending on AI systems will rise from US$85.3 billion in 2021 to over US$204 billion in 2025.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a way of speeding up repetitive tasks so that employees can focus on value-added activities, avoiding the mundane elements of their role. It can be deployed through a cloud service, or in some cases applications include RPA tools that can be exploited saving huge amounts of time with little investment.
Examples of how RPA can be used include optimising the performance of back-office activities such as the creation of sales orders, address book records and employee master records. It can also help improve the accuracy of data through automated error checking and gives companies the opportunity to seamlessly integrate multiple systems and processes with ease and flexibility. RPA can improve data quality, productivity and job satisfaction.
The people priority
Employees, customers and suppliers. Ultimately successful relationships with all of them will in some large part be based on their day-to-day experience with the business and how the underlying systems provide the services, products and applications they need.
In the case of employees, they also need a personal relationship with the CIO and their wider departments – they need to feel that the CIO’s plans are going to make their working life easier and more productive. Every CIO needs employee buy-in if they are to make a success of new projects, and their input will be invaluable to the development process.
At the same time, CIOs need to work collaboratively with other business leaders to create integrated ecosystems that allow companies to improve collaborations, work efficiently in the supply chain and positively impact the customer experience.
CIOs must also balance these groups’ needs with those of customers who require real-time feedback and access to services anywhere and at any time. They also demand consistency, receiving the same quality of service and features through every channel they choose to use when interacting with the business. That to some may seem an unreasonable expectation, but it is the reality of the consumerisation of IT that has taken place.
Looking forward
Many CIOs helped save their company during the pandemic and now have the unique opportunity from that success to be an enabler for long-term growth. It’s a platform that every CIO should be looking to capitalise on going forward. With new skills and technologies, the CIO of the future will continue to lead the way in the boardroom.
