CIOs are moving to more strategic roles as they came under pressure from their bosses to keep the pace of change high and innovation flowing.
According to research from Logicalis the shift has had an impact on those in the channel that support customers as they need to protect customers while the change is happening.
Logicalis chief technology officer Toby Alcock said CIO demands had changed and the business expects more from them and the pace they need to work.
“More businesses are looking for the technology to be closer to their outcomes and to their customers, so the CEO is having to respond to that anyway, but I think it’s been accelerated through the pandemic”, he added.
“The rate of change and the acceptance of the change has helped, but so too has the need to come up with more innovative ways to connect with customers during the pandemic, change and pivot the business, and drive new outcomes. That pressure has been on the CIO like never before,” Alcock said.
With wholesale remote working, a rush to the cloud and huge increases in the adoption of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and collaboration tools, the impact on CIOs has been significant and the chances of it being unwound to a pre-pandemic state are slim.
“Once a business gets used to seeing change being implemented quickly, it’s pretty hard to go back and say, ‘this will take a year’ again. They’re just used to things being turned on faster and faster”, said Alcock.
The latest Logicalis survey, which is in its eighth year, looked at a number of areas and charted several ongoing changes in the role of those in charge of the IT departments at customers.
“The first part is talking about the changing role of the CIO becoming the architect or agent of change. The second part is talking about how unlocking data can drive the business strategy and accelerate growth. And then the third part is talking about this culture of innovation and how the digital workplace is really going to empower that culture of innovation in an organisation”, said Alcock.
“The fourth part of the survey talks about the CIO priorities and the key priorities we have seen from them – so business continuity, resilience and mitigating risk.”
Those changes will have an impact on those across the channel that support customers, and are being seen as a positive at Logicalis because it can help drive a more strategic conversation.
