The role of the CIO continues to grow as organizational success is increasingly tied to its mastery of technology.
In 2024, the approach of CIOs to business innovation will take a significant step. Revamping business processes is more crucial than ever for staying competitive. As we move into 2024, CIOs are pivotal in transforming traditional procedures into efficient, technology-driven operations.
Their priorities have shifted towards a more strategic alignment of IT with business goals, a focus on data management for informed decision-making, and an emphasis on talent development to sustain innovation and agility. CIOs’ involvement in redefining these processes is integral to ensuring businesses are equipped and thriving in the face of a digital future.
Below are the top priorities for CIOs to focus on in 2024:
Control Costs to Fund Innovation: Rising costs or cost optimization will be the number one challenge in 2024. Including the acceleration of digital transformation, managing economic uncertainty, and matching high customer and employee expectations, today’s CIOs must balance multiple (and, at times, competing) priorities.
Key strategies include:
- By moving key workflows into more agile technology with a lower TCO and higher total economic impact, the cost of managing legacy must be reduced.
- To battle the backlog of requests for new applications that are coming from the business, use these cost savings to fund innovation.
- To get the highest value for the business at a lower up-front cost, focus on cloud-native, usage-based platforms when selecting innovation technologies.
Develop Your Enterprise AI Strategy: Those organizations that make successful use of AI will stay ahead of their competitors. But around the responsible and compliant use of AI in the enterprise, there are critical issues for CIOs. By 2026, Gartner has predicted that AI will be used routinely by 5% of workers against their employer’s wishes for completing tasks. Meeting business demand and implementing AI without introducing risk is the challenge for CIOs.
Key strategies include:
- By engaging openly with business users and defining compliant ways of using AI, CIOs will have to discourage the misuse of AI. This could mean enabling users with AI tools inside IT-governed enterprise apps.
- Manual processes or fixing all the gaps in your systems that need human intervention cannot be replaced by AI. CIOs need to drive a wider digital transformation of operations and incorporate AI in places where it can add value.
- They will have to study the implications of AI for their organizations, identify the specific risks in their operations, and create their own definition of what responsible AI will mean for them.
Modernize to Tighten Security and Reduce Risk: In 2024, CIOs should be prioritizing initiatives that combine these goals with those of innovation and modernization, as security and risk are the cornerstones of every CIO’s agenda, but tightening up security is not a tick-box exercise or a standalone initiative. So, if you can deliver against both requirements in a single project, make sure that is at the top of your list for 2024.
Key strategies include:
- To close the gaps between systems that create security risks in your organization, CIOs have to rationalize the technology stack, modernize legacy systems, and tackle technical debt.
- Business processes that rely on paper, email, and spreadsheets have to be digitized and moved into secure and compliant enterprise apps that protect data and reduce security risks.
- CIOs will have to leverage cloud-native technologies that bring the full benefits of the built-in security features of cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure.
Boost operational efficiency with automation: Enterprises evolving, expanding across geographies, and entering new markets create complexity. Inefficiency is the inevitable consequence for today’s CIOs. Profitable growth is prevented by the gaps between systems and silos of information. According to IDC, “organizations too often have to rely on ‘human duct tape’ to get things done because internal IT systems have not been able to keep up with these changing demands.”
Key strategies include:
- To design better ways of working, CIOs have to enable business teams to get a better understanding of the inefficiencies in their operations by mapping workflows and leveraging technologies such as process mining and process simulation.
- To enable people to deal with more complex work while focusing on customer service, CIOs have to reduce monotonous work for employees by automating steps and business logic.
- Avoid automation for its own sake. Using bots as band-aids has become a popular quick fix in recent years, and sometimes it fails to deliver the expected impact on the business. Why? Because it fails to impact the end-to-end process.
Transform Employee Experiences with Modern Apps: A key priority for CIOs looking to the year ahead is retaining technical and business talent. Fighting with the frustration of problematic technologies in the enterprise is a factor that drives employees away, and leadership often isn’t aware of all the problems. They have recognized this and are now responding with programs specifically designed for transforming the employee experience with modern applications.
Key strategies include:
- While retaining legacy technology as a system of record where necessary, CIOs have to create modern, composable apps that employees can engage with.
- They will have to orchestrate data to give staff the information they need, when they need it, so they can make better and faster decisions.
- To enable citizen developers on IT-controlled platforms, CIOs will have to find ways to do more with the resources they already have, embrace the low-code movement, and design programs.
Conclusion:
CIOs are doing several things today to stay ahead in 2024. From embracing AI to prioritizing user experience and fostering strategic partnerships, they continuously adapt to the ever-changing technological landscape. Their role has become increasingly important as technology continues to shape the business world. CIOs must keep up with the latest technological trends and understand how to leverage technology to improve their organizations. By embracing innovation and fostering strategic partnerships, they can drive their organizations forward and stay ahead of the curve in 2024 and beyond.
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