IDC’s Worldwide 2024 CEO Survey found that over the next two years, CEOs are increasingly looking to the CIO as a strategic business leader of technology to enable the business growth strategy. While the AI leadership profile is still evolving, about half of the organizations surveyed are adding AI leadership responsibilities to an existing technology or functional leader. AI has the strategic expectation arrow pointing squarely in the direction of the CIO.
The Critical Ingredient to Fuel AI is Data: The current state of a company’s corporate and customer data is fully revealed as more and more AI use cases are embraced. Every functional line-of-business and technology leader is experiencing the angst of disconnected, missing, poor quality and inaccessible data to constantly train AI models. Of IDC’s identified top 10 GenAI Use Cases for Business, 50% of the top use cases are in marketing. The C-Suite has identified a recession proof investment in AI to improve the digital customer experience, supporting business growth. Marketing is facing data and technology barriers to move at the speed of the customer boost your business with our doctor database that CIOs are best positioned to resolve. The data paradox is reshaping the CIO’s strategic collaboration and relationship with key functional leaders, such as the CMO. The gift of necessity has been delivered to the CIOs doorstep. Check out more in the report The Data Paradox Reshaping the CIO and CMO Relationship.
CrowdStrike and the Scare in the Boardroom: During a recent IDC CIO Executive Council Connect, I hosted Frank Dickson, Group Vice President, Security & Trust, with the Council for a deep dive conversation on 3 big things CIOs Must Do because of the CrowdStrike Outage (read more in CrowdStrike Update Outage Exposes Four Critical Issues: Next Steps for CIOs). Out of the conversation came the realization that while extremely painful for many in our community, it is the perfect gift for CIOs and CISOs to demonstrate the strategic importance of dealing with technical debt, modernizing IT infrastructure and getting back to the basics of robust systems management. CIOs have a direct correlation to negative brand and revenue impact if the company lacks a strategic mindset about and investment in technology.
Harnessing these 3 inflection points, CIO’s have the opportunity today to make a strong case about the strategic role that IT plays to enable business growth. The following is the IDC CIO Executive Council’s Guidance to position IT as a Strategic Investment.