C-suite technology leaders are becoming more all-encompassing business leaders. They are in charge of digital initiatives that drive growth and impact all areas of the organization. As per Gartner, IT cannot match the pace of change alone. Fusion teams comprising IT and business staff will collaborate and drive innovation to digitize the business. This means that CIO leadership is becoming more complex, as they need to reach beyond and within the organization for achieving their goals by 2022. Here, we explore these goals, based on Evanta’s annual survey of CIOs.
Top priorities for CIOs
The top priorities in 2022 for CIOs from leading companies around the world are cybersecurity strategies and data and analytics. Compared to 2021, these two areas of focus switched places. In addition, digital talent moved to the top five priorities, which indicates the urgent need for talent and skills in the current environment. See the figure below.
How CIOs execute cybersecurity strategies
To achieve their cybersecurity goals, 86% of CIOs focus on mitigating risks, 52% want to improve resiliency and 35% are improving processes and efficiencies.
However, CIOs also face certain challenges around cybersecurity strategies. 52% find the quickly changing landscape as a factor impacting the implementation of cybersecurity strategies. 40% of CIOs face a lack of resources while 39% suffer from lack of skills.
Data & analytics goals and challenges for CIOs
For data and analytics, 80% of CIOs report that making data-driven decisions is their primary goal. This is followed by improving business outcomes (71%) and delivering and defining value (44%).
53% of CIOs consider lack of skills as the main challenge around data and analytics. 41% say they lack resources while 34% find legacy technologies as a challenge.
Digital business priorities of CIOs
Digital capabilities are becoming more important for business objectives in different departments. These departments need to have more control over how the company uses digital technology. However, this can lead to divisions becoming isolated from each other, rather than working together as a team.
66% of CIOs cite expanding digital business and increasing maturity as their primary objective to drive digital business priorities. 60% focus on improving business outcomes and 57% consider optimizing the customer experience.
44% of CIOs say lack of skills is their biggest challenge to driving digital business objectives. Other challenges are legacy technology (38%) and lack of resources (36%).
Summing up:
CIOs report that their goal for this year is to improve business outcomes in their area of work. The goals and challenges of CIOs are closely integrated with the rapid expansion of digital business opportunities. They want to improve business outcomes and drive growth, but all of their priorities are related to digital in some way. However, they face several challenges in achieving this goal. One of the biggest obstacles is a lack of skills, which suggests that CIOs will need to invest in upskilling and reskilling current employees and recruiting new talent.
Source: Evanta
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