2021 State of the CIO
hello everyone and welcome to this very special webcast presentation of idg's 2021 state of the cio survey results the cio executive council has collaborated with idg on a number of these presentations over the years to offer an in-depth view at some of the findings of the annual surveys these are all based on responses from top it leaders and line of business executives my name is tim scannell and i am director of strategic content at the council this is the 20th year igg has conducted this influential research that provides a qualitative glimpse at what i.t leaders are planning in terms of budgets technology initiatives spending and talent engagement and recruitment just to name a few topic areas in all 1062 executives responded to the survey more than 800 of whom are directly involved in it this is about a 15 percent increase over last year's responses this i think is an indication of how eager executives in the it community are to share information as we come out of the grips of the covet pandemic and enter a period focusing on recovery and resiliency it is a pivotal time for the it industry and companies in general worldwide for the first time in this year's survey we also ask questions related to diversity and inclusion within the it organization a topic we will touch upon during our discussion today joining us to provide qualitative insights from the it front are two experienced technology executives saranacvi executive vice president and cio at hms host a leading provider of food and beverage services located at airports and other travel venues around the world and nathan rogers senior vice president and cio for saic a fortune 500 technology integrator that provides solutions to the defense space civilian and intelligence markets thank you both for taking part in the discussion today thank you i'd like to remind everyone in the audience that the session is purposely designed to be interactive and we invite you to take part by sending your questions and comments via cio.com's linkedin or twitter pages we'll be monitoring the flow and we'll do our best to present as many as we can taking us through the survey results and moderating the discussion today is my good friend and colleague john gallant who is the enterprise consulting director at idg and before that chief content officer at idg us media welcome john hey tim how are you very well thank you i think you'll agree that this past year has been challenging for most companies and i t organizations to say the least and that 2021 and future years will be both demanding and exciting in terms of opportunities tim i couldn't agree with you more as as you mentioned we're going to be going through the state of the cio research results today but i've also been working with idg this year on research that we've done about the role of the pandemic and how it's changed uh changed everything from how workers are supported in the organization to the priorities of digital transformation automation security all of those kinds of issues and i think this survey today gives us a good look at that as well as some of the issues about how uh it's changing the role of the of the cio so we'll look at this today in four parts again some of the impact of the pandemic current status of the cio role and then we'll look at how that role is expanding and what some of the priorities that respondents told us for 2021 and beyond and then we'll look also at some of the business and tech initiatives including diversity inclusion as you mentioned early on it's an absolute pleasure for me to be joined by sarah and nathan and i'll be sharing some of the research results and then asking them to weigh in on what they found interesting how this matches with what they're experiencing within their organizations and their thoughts on what's ahead so i'm really looking forward to hearing from them and hearing from all of you as well as tim said we want to make this interactive and engaging so um again let's start by looking quickly at the pandemic and the new tech landscape i want to show three slides that capture some of the high level impacts from a budget perspective and then in terms of new initiatives i also want to reiterate that this is just a slice of the overall state of the cio survey there are many more slides that you can take a look at we've provided a link from that so that you can access the full survey a lot of work goes into this each year it has a lot of history behind it as well so we can see some trends as well as some some new areas one of the things that we asked folks was what happened to your 2020 it as a result of the pandemic and you can see that it's pretty much a split it's almost a three-way split here divided into thirds roughly there's a third of the folks who increase their i.t budget and i think you know i've talked to a number of cios who really emphasize the fact that coming out of this challenging situation they want to put their company in the strongest possible position many cited having learned from the 2008 great recession that if you only cut costs you don't come out of these challenging situations as strongly as companies that continue to invest while at the same time optimizing their expenses about a third of the folks made no changes to their budget and about thirty percent of enterprise size companies and that's companies we would say are a thousand plus and employees uh actually saw a budget cut now i wanna show how this has changed this is kind of a busy chart but it to re to emphasize that we've been talking with cios for a long time about these trends and what they're doing with their budgets we have the survey that we do every year the cio tech poll that we ask them about what's going to come what's coming in the in the year ahead and we're comparing some of our new data with what's happened all the way back actually this data extends well beyond uh 2008 but i want to point out here in december 2019 when we did this survey the blue line what 60 percent of cios said at that point they were going to increase their budgets for 2020 and only about seven percent said they were going to cut them about 34 said they were going to stay the same well look at what happened in april 2020 when we did our first covid research study that number of companies that were going to cut budgets jumped up to 35 percent and the number who said they were going to increase them went down to 25 and you can see when we did this survey in december of 2020 things have stabilized again that was the slide i showed you earlier 49 now tell us that for the year ahead they're going to increase their budget 39 say their budget will stay the same as 2020 and only 12 percent say that their budgets will be lower than in 2020. so you can see that things have stabilized and in fact there's even a sense of more confidence there going forward we also asked people whether they agreed with the following statement you know did you implement new technologies new i.t strategies or new methodologies due to the pandemic vast majority of people agreed with that statement cios are doing new things they've implemented new technologies new approaches as a result of the pandemic and here's where i really wanted to call in sarah and sarah and nathan nathan let me start with you was there anything that we saw in the budget data that struck you is interesting how does it how does that jive with your own experiences yeah sure no we definitely experience that v curve there where you know we're spending you know we're flat or up going into the 2020 and then with the pandemic and everyone going home for us it was march 13th we all went home i remember flying home that day um and we kind of froze everything really short term just said okay hold on let's just take see what's going on right once we came out of it we said you know what we we've actually got to invest in technology so so again you can sign up you see that curve on that prior slide going up and in here you see the results of a lot of other cios i think experiencing the same thing for us we had been really focused in 2019 we had stood up a team with hr facilities in i.t to talk
about the workplace of the future so you know it's kind of slowly going along then comes the pandemic and all of a sudden it's much more than you know the workplace of the future it's really the work of the future and that team has become a really mature team i was talking before the call we just had in all hands and we presented some of what we're working on for the future of work for saic and the first time as a cio for me where i actually had digital investment dollars during the year during a pandemic given to me for my budget not to do anything new per se but to take our road map and go faster you know all the things we were planning they're like we got to go faster with this stuff i mean it was really exciting um as we've been kind of moving through this year and seeing it mature that's great sarah how about you does this map with your experience yeah absolutely i know and first of all thank you for having me uh i'd like to echo what nathan was saying we've seen a significant shift not only just on a focus of technology but just the appetite and the realization and recognition about how important technology is uh we are uh you know i get very few questions when i'm talking about technology and and how it's going to influence the business transformation that we are seeing we've gone from you know being all on site to really quickly shifting into an environment that's totally remote uh the the adoption of new technologies such as collaboration tools the microsoft teams and how quickly users have not only adapted to that but have really appreciated having you know such avenues through which they could engage with the business um which has as a result um you know increase uh collaboration better collaboration with it um not only just with the appreciation but also investment in budget i'd like to echo what uh nathan said we need we can't do things fast enough is is the theme um that that i'm faced with i also represent uh the retail industry in food and beverage industries so for those for us it was not only just transforming the workforce internally but to make that investment to really meet the demands of the consumers so if somebody's coming in dining with us they're not you know really necessarily comfortable picking up a menu so deploying contactless technologies and deploying all of these at a very fast pace has been the demand and and actually exciting because we've gone from a push to a pull environment for technologies which is pretty exciting that's great so i wanted to ask you we this this slide talks about new things that people have implemented what have you done differently what's what's a change in strategy methodology technology footprint that you think will will continue that it's not just a reflection of the moment but will continue moving forward sarah what have you what's kind of a lasting change as a result of this yeah i i just think that the entire environment has changed as i said earlier it's how technology is looked at as far as specifically looking at our approach and strategies we found ourselves to be a little bit more open to trial and error than we've been in the past you know customers had very low appetite of any type of failures they wanted things perfect before it went into production uh but in light of covet it has kind of shifted the culture uh where we are now able to be a little bit more open to trying new things so that's that's definitely a pretty a decent shift in addition to that it has also forced me to take a look at the partners that we collaborate with you know what is their appetite to really lift and shift very quickly um in response to the changing business environment so that has allowed me to take a step back and really weigh in as to which other players that i want to continue in my portfolio and who are going to be stronger players as a part of the strategy so it's it's it's a wake-up call for sure from all aspects engagement with the business engagement with the players and overall technology investments that can scale and adapt to a very rapid change and i think that that point about your partners is a really important one and hoping that they understand the changing expectations and the changing uh strategies going forward nathan what kind of permanent or semi-changes do you see coming yeah i mean i totally agree with the cultural stuff i'll go to the technology side and make it really simple zoom um you know or teams i mean how many people have you this is just part of their life now um and it's so ingrained you know it's kind of like when you get your first smartphone now you don't know what you do without it i think we're gonna see that with the collaboration tools as well and they're going to get more and more advanced but you know i'd work at schools you know anywhere with friends across the country i think it's really going to be part of our culture and the technology that allows us to collaborate much more so than i i believe any of us were experiencing fully before um so you know going to go really simple there but just the zoom you know feeling is is totally going to stick around exactly i agree with you sore neck and everything that comes with all these video calls so we want to spend some time looking at the the status of the cio and every year we ask folks you know do you we don't ask them to choose whether they're transformational strategic or functional we ask them basically where they're spending their time where where's their energy really focused and then we align that with these definitions so uh obviously i think if you asked everybody to select you i would select superstar for myself but we ask people where are you spending your time and then how does that really uh define you as a cio leader so the functional leader is really focused on operations focused on internal delivering internal business value sort of that traditional older role of the cio transformation leaders are really working more with their business counterparts uh focusing on an enterprise-wide perspective really being strong collaborators and business strategists are those who are really focused beyond the borders of the business looking at creating ecosystems looking at creating the next level of products and services that a company offers so this is where people are viewing themselves today if we look at 2020 and 2021 if they based on their responses this is how the group breaks down pretty much a split more people in the strategic and transformational camp but when we ask people where they want to be in three years clearly we see that the bulk of folks want to be in that strategic role business strategist role so i i wonder um nathan and sarah is there anything in this slide that surprises you and and how does it kind of match up with the evolution of your own roles chad you want johnny some money yeah um so you know what i think it's interesting i know i've been through you know i've heard it leaders talk for a long time about becoming more strategic having a seat at the table you know i think we're starting to see that that perception of the of ourselves is here where we're seeing the increase and we see the increase in the future what will be interesting i know we as we go through the survey we'll see other results is is that actually what's happening and how do our our peers or other executives um and our organizations see us i mean i think it's really trying to to you know make this idea of being more strategic real for ourselves but also within our organizations too that that is the challenge but this is you know good direction great sarah what's your thinking on this yeah i mean john i would say that this transformation this change the shift in the role of i.t began way before covet you know as as soon as digital transformation came in and how technology became more and more embedded in our business uh the role of cio was expected to change we all like to believe that we are all very transformational interested strategic in uh in our operations i i do believe that there is a third category here where it's a hybrid of transformational and functional you cannot be a transformation engine if you don't understand the functional side of it and the challenges that you face in running of the business so um there that transformation that changed the shift in the role had began way before covet and will continue to evolve and has become even more important i can speak for my industry and for my role personally as soon as uh digital began to become more and more relevant um so did my role from you know working for a cfo and now reporting to the ceo for the very reason that um the need for technology to not only be uh an executor of the technology executor of the strategy but actually be a creator a voice in creating the strategy became important so this does not surprise me at all and if if a cio does not change and get connected with the business then they're no longer going to stay relevant it is a need it is imperative for their success makes sense tim did you we have a question i understand yeah actually we have a couple of questions from the audience the first one is directed at sarah uh you know earlier she said that there's more leeway for trial and error in her organization but the audience member is wondering is it more pragmatic though you know you know obviously that digital transformation is accelerated and moving much faster is there more uh you know caution in making those decisions going forward um i think there's those fine balance when you think about digital and innovation by nature that you're seeing a lot of that at least in my industry coming in from smaller players that might not have all of the processes and everything baked to the extent that we would we are typically used to um so striking a good balance between security and safety and still being open to try i mean one of the idea that we are playing with is how do we create a field pilot which really addresses all of the security needs and really isolated from the rest of the business that gives us a good playground to test out new players without really compromising the rest of our business so those are the type of ideas that we are playing playing with as a result of trying to strike a balance between being a little bit more risk takers yet mitigating it uh with creating controls around and striking a balance thank you and one further question this is one is directed at nathan i believe back in the days of yore pre-covered most every company had mobile management rules and structures in place now most everyone is working at home or was working at home in 20 and a big percentage will be working from home going forward nathan is there a playbook for this are there rules in place that saic in terms of you know uh technology and what what is uh uh what is it what is given out to people in terms of the home offices yeah no we we um we do embrace the ability to work from anywhere um on any device but we have a lot of security around that so we're certainly moving towards a zero trust environment but um as a government contractor we follow what's called nist 800 171 so the nist standards i mean there's also new cmmc standards too that you'll you'll probably hear about um in the news and with the government so we do follow those and um that allows us to have a very secure environment uh regardless of where you work i mean it's definitely you know it's not like um your personal life you don't have the all the freedoms that you have in your personal life for sure um there's a lot of uh rules and regulations but i'm working out of my house today as a cio and you know we're we're keeping our environment pretty secure so we were able to do that day one because we have always had a very geographically dispersed population over 60 percent of our employees sit at customer sites um and they use customer computers they use their personal computers to come in um you know virtually so we we've always had a uh environment so when the when we had to go home it it wasn't too bad we were used to that environment if i may just um add to that the one impact that we are seeing because of the shift of resources you know remotely as we're looking at a cyber insurance and all the the need for security the need for compliance and really exercising and demonstrating that you're in a fully secure environment no matter where you are has become very important especially for those those companies that are renegotiating the cyber um insurances because you're seeing a lot more content around how are you ensuring um security um as a result of distribution of workforce and and that and there's a question that just came in about cyber security in terms of that uh so are your cyber security efforts more on building awareness among those those workers right now because they're at home and there's a lot more happening around them or is it applying tools that they can apply to their own technology actually both because just really doing um you know acceptable use training and procedures and policies educating them and doing multiple cycles rather than one or two that we used to do we are doing you know campaigning on what to look for for you know for instance uh ransomware and all of these other intrusions that we've seen in the past um it's increasing awareness and then putting in controls around it to monitor them a lot more closely than we've ever done before john i know you're the moderator i was gonna say if you flip to the next slide um the cyber security question um kind of pops up there at the top so you know and so from a security management standpoint and to touch back to people being more strategical i i believe you know as cios you know working with your ciso or cisco's on the phone as well you know cyber hygiene's always been table stakes but you have got to be part of your company's cyber security strategy and building out that road map cyber security i think for organizations in the future is really a differentiator you've got to you've got to nail it and and be amazing at it and there's a lot of companies that we've seen over the last year right that have had trouble um clearly solar winds recently but we'll see more of that too so i think it's really important and it's hard because it's expensive and invisible to a certain degree and putting mfa on your employees is not fun so it creates a lot of rules so you're going to get a lot of pushback from the company so it's really you have to be strategical you have to convince the executive team the board of directors is very much paying attention to this convince them get the right funding and secure the environment there's nothing easy about it so i consider this one of um you know one of the top you know you have 10 things you're working on it's one of the top 10 uh strategy things you need to work on and i think we see it here in this chart that this is what people are thinking about yeah nathan that's a great segue because this we asked people and i'll show you this in another slide we ask people to uh cios to best characterize their current focus and how they're spending their time and this is what we got back to me what's interesting about this is this real mix of both operational uh and semi-urgent issues along with really business oriented issues so if you look at things like security management at the top of the list improving i t operations and systems performance implementing new systems and architecture you know three of the top four uh but then we have aligning i.t with business goals driving business innovation cultivating the it business partnership so again a real mix of operational and strategic and then when we ask attendees i'm sorry we've been doing too many events when we asked cio's in the research which of the following activities do you plan to spend more time on in the next three years this is how the mix changes and we can see that it that more of the business oriented goals come to the top implementing new systems and architecture still there i think that's a change that's been accelerated by the pandemic you know as sarah has talked about the pandemic as an accelerator of big changes that were already underway but how did these you know sarah how did these priorities line up with what you're working on or were there anything in here that really struck you as odd um no this is pretty uh aligned with what i am seeing not only just within our organization but industry in general i i do think that the reason why um security is not further up or or available because it's a given i mean i think the expectation is that um it's not something that we can be complacent with it cannot be out of sight out of mind uh and with any of these initiatives the expectation is that security is a part of that decision-making process so i'm um you know this does not surprise me at all a couple other things that i was looking at was although the percentages aren't as high comparatively but as we look at business innovation it's also doing um a lot of like transformation automation redesigning of the business processes which there's a smaller percentage here and then the 25 percent that's noted midway which says cultivating the it business partnership again a significant shift and i expect this to become a little bit more perhaps move higher in the list because the boundaries between it and the business are becoming very gray as well as far as i'm concerned i i see everybody being a technology leader making it you know harder for us to stay ahead of the curve um so that was again another thing that was interesting to me is how this is becoming a topic of discussion which it hasn't been in the past before so i'm interested in getting your view on this both nathan and sarah and i'll start with you nate's and obviously an awful lot of change going on right now there are all the changes that that your team is focused on in helping the business to deal with the current situation and prepare for business going forward but also take big changes going on within technology with cloud and security issues and how are you as a cio balancing these you know the the strategic part and the you know the ongoing operational part so i mean i think you know as a leader you need to focus on those leadership skills and and really those soft skills um and have the right team i mean i have a very strong team that's able to run the day-to-day business you know i have strategical people that are able to think about strategy i have a good cdo good cis so you know i've got the right people that can help me so that you know yes i'm focused on strategy but i'm also focused on leadership and leading um the team to do the right stuff so i can focus also on on strategies for the company beyond really i.t so you know we do a lot of m a activity i'm very involved with that um yeah looking at new uh business works you know business business areas to pursue so i think you gotta to me it at some point you it the leadership part is a huge part of your job and i'm very into org health and being making sure your organization is a top performing team so that's how i'm able to balance it um with the day-to-day versus strategy and nathan just before i let you off the hook there as a result of what happened over the past year have you made any changes in your in your in the structure of your team to emphasize new skills or new or new initiatives i have we we um and i know a lot of other companies already well down this road but we were not um so we have um started you know using agile processes devsecop processes i mean things i know a lot of companies been doing for a long time but we were not so we really took that on this year because we realized we needed to move faster and as sarah said earlier you know it failed quick um as well so we we definitely took that on and we are full-blown you know getting that team organized and you know there's been new members of our team we brought in that were real practitioners in that area too that could help the team uh because you know we've got a lot of great uh team members but some of them hadn't lived it so we brought some people in from the outside to help as well and it's going really well sarah can you talk to me about how you're striking that balance you and your team between you know all the change and technology issues that need to be dealt with the acceleration of these changes and the strategic focus yeah our our uh journey of really transforming i.t started about
a year ago right before you know kobe hit us so we were well positioned what we did was um started taking a look at the demand that was coming very rapidly due to digital implementations and we just didn't have the bandwidth or the capacity nor you know would we ever have enough money to do everything that we needed to do so we had to optimize our id performance and we need to really figure out not only how to restructure uh but create more funding to allocate towards digital so we ended up outsourcing it that was uh it's it's funny that i signed the agreement february of uh 2020 right before covet hit so uh we just made it right under the under the wire and by far you know looking back i i think that was the best decision that i made um to otherwise i wouldn't have been able to really respond to the demand that was coming um through outsourcing i split the organization into two parts the running part of the business the functional you know dealing with the day-to-day operations became an outsourced function and i scale down and created a very focused team which was going to drive uh you know all of the new initiatives for the business that we're creating more value um and so i was able to like really secure the talent that i needed whether it was on cloud or digital or any of the you know rpas robotics and all of those um skills that were so badly needed so now i have a very internally dedicated team that's very close to the business understands the business very rapid and really trying out new things um while i have the day-to-day the running of the business uh you know being done by a third-party uh provider so that that has worked well for us um and because uh we had taken that step of outsourcing i was able to reduce the cost of running of the it by 30 percent which thereby helped me contribute you know those funds towards transformation so all in all it has been like a fantastic thing and the the other advantage that you know very quickly with this outsourced solution that i've been able to build in as a part of our agreement was have the ability to tap into the talent from around the world to really secure talent for innovation because you can never have enough internal resources to deal with the rapid pace at which technology is changing so with this outsourcing agreement now i have you know um access to talent that which i didn't have in the past and we're going to talk about talent and skills that are in demand and hard to get so that's a great point thanks for tuning that up tim i think you have a question uh yeah a question for one of the attendees sort of zeroing in the comments that nathan made about uh working with the team and the business side uh the attendee was wondering if the if the lobs the line of business people uh were really up to speed on agile methodology and the importance of most viable production of products or did you have to do some sort of a training so for for our company they are um so let me say two ways the lines of business that are customer facing are aware of it because we're an i.t company engineering company so many of them are very familiar with the agile journey and what it is our functional groups we're absolutely training them so you know our contracts our finance you know hr um we've been doing sessions and bringing them along and what their role is now as part of that team that subject matter expert so internally absolutely a lot of education's been needed because we've been doing things the same way for a very long time and and people have been here a long time which is great um but but we had to bring in some new ideas and get those things but people have been really excited about it because they control their pipeline they understand what's being done i mean people are really excited about it from a functional perspective but in terms of our lines of business the the vast majority of employees you know they they understand agile because that's you know what we do for our customers um so so that wasn't a hard part sarah what about you did you have to spend some time on digital literacy and operation literacy um yes i i just think where we needed to educate the customers the most was how and why they couldn't get everything yesterday so the speed of delivery was uh something that we just needed to set some expectations so uh you know agile processes the minute that you educate them on that the expectation is i'm going to ask for it and i'm going to get it right away um so so that was uh for me by far the the biggest hurdle that we had to overcome right thank you so i want to talk about some of the expansion continuing on this theme of expanding the role of the cio in the new areas of focus we asked cios which of these actions or activities changed in importance over the last six to 12 months and you can see the breakdown in the darker blue is increased in importance no changes the brighter blue and kind of gray color is decreased it's an importance and these are ranked by there are many other selections but these are the ranked by the ones that ruin importance the most and again it's this interesting mix of both business and operational focus topping the list automating business or it processes i have heard this in every conversation with cios and nit teams what i love on here is this interacting directly with customers i in order to innovate in order to create new products and services in order to better support sales teams and other teams out in the field interacting directly with customers is so important along with developing the customer journey and understanding that and the role of customer experience in the success of the company so i want to talk with um with nathan and sarah about that i also want to point out we will be talking about diversity and inclusion coming up in a couple of these other topics but sarah let's start with you in terms of this interacting with customers can you talk about what you and your team do in order to really get into the head of the customers and how that's changing for you in in your role yeah this um certainly took um a hit when we were faced with covet you know customers uh were inundated with the demand of keeping the workforce safe especially when you are in food and beverage industry it's you know ppe compliance tracking of you know covet cases all of these other things um so what we found that they were they were completely overwhelmed and not having the education or or the background to really see how technology can really ease that burden uh it presented and opened the door for us where we could interact directly with the with the customers and understand where they were spending most of their time and really give them technology solutions um to make things easier which in the absence of that partnership and relationship we would not have been able to do so um the the other thing that is over here that jumps out at me is influencing the customer journey again another idea as to as we start educating as cios get closer to the business and they understand where the business uh is having the most heartache or where they're spending most of the time they may not it may not be just easily apparent that technology again could be an influencer so you cannot transform the business without having those partnerships and without understanding where the pain points are um another opportunity another area for us to engage better with the customers you know we've been able to track the entire life stream i mean the other challenges that we had for instance so you know we work in airports uh airlines um and plain mints were very unpredictable so how do you open and close the store how do you staff people quickly how do you shift resources all of these challenges the more we understood the more we were able to bring uh technology solutions to enable this shift um in in the new way of operating uh within the within our space so thank you that's great nathan i want to get your take when we think of customers i think we always tend to think of you know an individual at a retail outlet or a customer at a restaurant or someone buying online but you're a b to b or b to p to g business to government uh organization what does this mean for you in terms of interacting with your customers uh and and things like customer journey yeah and i'll take it i'll take one other stuff too when i think of customers we you know not only do we think of external but we also think of internal because we certainly do a lot of you know r d so we'll support the the business you know the the r d team or the business development team or you know our hr team for improving our employee experience so our customers you know it's external and internal what's it what's interesting about these two and i was glad sarah went first was that i was surprised that it was such a big increase in importance and not a no change because i would think those two would have always been like top of mind very important um so i was surprised to actually see how big of an increase in importance they took if that makes sense from a statistics standpoint um the dni one i wasn't surprised by because i think that's been really top of mind for a lot of people and and something we're addressing more aggressively than we ever have before but yeah now i think of the customer um also is the internal and certainly these are things that um are incredibly important i mean there's nothing more important than you know customer excellence um and and customer success so the these are critical for sure absolutely john if you don't mind if i can quickly add for for us uh where uh we had to shift our focus was again we do have uh internal and external customers but with covert for instance external customers were looking for contactless engagement it became imperative if we didn't offer that solution they were not going to stop at our stores so we again had to take that into consideration as we were moving forward with our innovative ideas great so i we also asked is the cio role expanding into any of the following areas and this is a segment a little a shorter list of the ones that we asked about but the number one area where the cio role is expanding and virtually every cio says their role is expanding beyond traditional i.t responsibilities the number one area is no surprise to me with cyber security i had always hoped i always think there should be that very strong connection uh and linkage between those two areas data analysis data privacy and compliance customer experience which we've talked about nathan anything on this list that surprises you or anything here that you know you've already been doing and expect yeah yeah i think those top two too are it's good to see those at the top um you know this i have i have a ciso um she she's alicia she's great she reports into the into myself and then i also this year set up a chief data officer role um it didn't have anything to do with cobit we were already headed down that path given the importance of data analysis and really improving our business intelligence um and so both of those roles are in the cio organization and i i mean we are so tight at the hip and you know when i have my office of the cio meet you know it's the three of us plus you know our software engineer our infrastructure and our customer experience um leader you know the six of us are together and i just think it's a very powerful team and we're able to get a lot done and react quickly but also put our road maps together and be very proactive so i i find it to be fantastic i would be really bummed if if it was not that way so i would encourage all cios to to get those teams closer if they're not today sarah did you want to weigh in on that yeah it just surprises me that 96 percent of cios thought that it was expanding for me it was it has always been a part of my role uh you know whether it's talking about data or talking about cyber security so that was the only thing that kind of surprised me a bit uh this these are the two areas that should always be the focus of cio because honestly from data you're creating value for the organization and optimizing it makes the i and cio right yeah exactly exactly no i agree so we also asked in your current role as a creation of new revenue generating initiatives among your job responsibilities and it's broke down into three different answers nearly 70 percent say yes that you know the creation of new revenue generating initiatives is among their tim i think on uh pros at least he froze for me i assume he's froze for the audience i think so yeah i guess so so uh i guess we're focusing on rev yeah i can jump in if you want and then i mean when i when i looked at this the line of business um well you know what do you think about the response but there you go john is back john is back back great i think we lost you flipped a slide while you were frozen there you were back one slide great i know i actually skipped over a slide because because of time constraints oh good all right all right i wanted to ask where you stand in terms of you know your role in revenue generating initiatives for the company uh and does this does the data here surprise you yeah i mean i'll i'll say that i am directly involved in that there are a number of self-service initiatives that we are deploying which are external consumer facing um so that is um increasing our capture rate as far as how many uh you know uh different customers that we can reach it's expanding our reach um in addition to that uh through the use of technology we are able to tap into new sources that were previously not available uh for us so this does not surprise me at all uh and in fact i'm really glad to see that this is the focus of many great nathan how about for you yeah no it's great to hear sarah's success i think what you're doing is really great at your company for me i'm really in that second bar where i'm teamed up i wouldn't say i don't own p l but you know again working m a working with our cto um you know working on different uh supporting our manufacturing program or supply chain or we have a lot of um you know uh secure work our team is very focused on that and helping with um getting those programs stood up and then supporting them and and working directly with the customer uh where we generate revenue but we're certainly teaming uh with the the programs not not leading per se so um so i think it's exciting you know what sarah's doing in her organization i mean just quickly any advice for the 32 who say that their team is not tasked with creating and that means they're not involved they're not leading advice for them uh that seems a lot to me at this point in the evolution of the role yeah i mean my advice would be just get close to the business i mean in fact i forget where i was reading an article where it said cios are now coming from the business side of the house more so from a technology uh tier uh that that in itself tells us that the need for cios to really understand the business side of the side of the house is imperative i mean how can you transform how can you generate more value if you don't understand and it's a journey i mean the more that you start engaging with the business the more trust is developed and more they start relying on you so there's a shift in culture uh and and it can only begin with better partnership and improving you know and steering committees are a great way spending time in the business which is which is uh something that uh i like to do you know postcode as well educating your teams to spend time with the business really being on the front line are some of the ways through which you can see where are the pain points and then come up with solutions um to help resolve those thanks the job rotation's a great thought you know whether it's yourself or people on your team that you rotate in from outside the business will give you more you know diversity of thought across the business i personally came out of finance and and shared service operations that was my background before i got to it so i came with a very different lens than my it team and i think that's a great idea i think also you know if your organization has a cto that's not in your team but it's it's part of the company or you you do have m a so you have someone who's focused on you know strategic acquisitions or mergers making sure you're close to them and understand what they're doing and then also trying to get on the calendar of if you have you know big lines of business presidents or vice presidents or whatever they may be called to just just have that conversation about the strategy because things will come up that you could be like yeah i can help you with that um i think those are really important ways and then as sarah mentioned once you get more involved getting that steering committee going um and really partnering on the road map um and owning it together um i think starts to to get into those upper two great thanks nathan so one of the things i love about this survey there's 1062 respondents and 250 of them are line of business that gives us the opportunity to kind of compare how cios view themselves versus what's on the mind of line of business folks and if you have a chance to look at the full survey you're going to see a number of things uh everything from what they what the ceo is expecting from the technology department right now that what's the line of business view on that what do they think the ceo wants as well as what does the cio think that the ceo wants and there's some real differences there but here we asked cios themselves about their level of agreement with these statements 92 percent say the role is becoming more digital innovation-focused 89 more involved in leading digital transformation initiatives compared to business counterparts eighty-one percent say they've implemented new technology to enable better customer experiences and interactions but here we ask the line of business respondents to 250 non-cios how they view the cio role and it breaks down into these kind of personality types or role types 28 view them as a strategic advisor that proactively identifies business needs opportunities makes recommendations 25 percent view as a consultant evaluating and advising on business need technology choices risk assessor cautious voice of reason autonomous players primarily doing their own thing this to me seems like a real mismatch in the views between how cios view the role and how line of business is viewing the cio so nathan what striker what strikes you about this and why do you think is that differentiation i don't know you know my thought is i'm going to take this back take the percentages off and i'm going to go to my executive leadership team and ask them because i mean if i'm not in that strategic advisor box i'd be kind of bummed out so i mean i'm sure i share in all of all all five of those to a certain degree right there's a part of me that probably fits them all but that would be the one that i would consider so the fact that there's such a high percentage of line of business that didn't pick that um and i i mean i don't understand if you feel the same way but i got to imagine a lot of the cios on this call feel i hope they would pick me there so i'm going to go back and ask like i'm very transparent with my team i will absolutely go back and ask i'm kind of curious is sarah do you do you see this as a communication issue that perhaps that cio isn't communicating as effectively as possible just what they are involved with and what they are driving forward in the organization look i i think our cio role is still seen as a technical call them and i have a technical issue the the business continues to see us that way and it's going to be a while before there is a shift in perception in addition to that at least in my organization there are centers of excellence for instance that are being created which are outside of i t everything that's happening in center of excellence is driven by technology but the business sees that as a separate entity therefore they might not be connecting the dots and we're not seeing that you know these are the changes that are happening driven by cio i still think that cios are being seen as just their boundaries our technology solution providers not necessarily strategic and it's just um you know we need to work on communication we need to improve and again going back to my previous comment the more that we are embedded in the business the more they start leaning on us um to drive solutions the more they're going to shift their focus and see as strategic players rather than just as solution providers i think it sounds like you need a high priced internal consultant and i'd be happy to fill that role marketing campaign yeah i'm going to skip over a couple slides because i really want to make sure we have time to talk about this issue been a big issue uh in in american society this year not just this year but really heightened this year this issue of diversity diversity and inclusion we asked uh cios to respond whether they their level of agreement uh and this is the group that would have said agree i'm sorry agree somewhat or strongly agree and that's on a range of don't agree agree slightly but these are the folks who say strongly agree or agree somewhat 77 our team includes a mix of genders that's remarkable to me that there's 23 teams that don't have a mix of genders at this point 77 our organization understands that our innovation capability increases if diversity inclusion is a is a strength of our team 73 our team includes a mix of ethnic and racial groups 72 percent nearly three-quarters were making dni a priority during the hiring process great news there and our current team of less than 60 percent uh includes people of varying physical abilities i'd ask you both i'll start with you sarah what strikes you from this slide and then talk a little bit about what what what's happening in your organization around diversity and inclusion before we go there john can i add some context to this discussion just to people don't understand there is a problem here so a survey a women in technology survey done by idc 86 of the people who responded to that survey said that a lack of diversity within an organization will have a definite impact on an organization's culture and its revenue yet if you look at some of the statistics that 16 of managers in the information technology industry um are women and and the rest is are not so there's a disparity there and mckinsey uh was quoted as saying this is a quote from mckinsey women are at a high risk of leaving the workplace due to the co the challenges of covert 19 the impact of this loss particularly the loss of women leaders could be devastating to companies so this is just not a discussion this is an imperative yeah yeah i i couldn't agree with you more but the thing is in spite of our like best effort we are just not finding that talent i mean i think john in our previous conversations i was talking about we have to go back to the root of it if you look at stem education and look at how many really females are entering into these fields i mean looking at how we how important technology has become in our lives yet you're not seeing as many females enter into the field so we need to start some of our programs from there to really attract some of the you know diverse groups to enter into these fields and then support them through the journey i mean we have we are actively trying to bring in diversity but unfortunately just the pool isn't there now with you know the evolution of workforce and really having more acceptable standard of remote remote employees all over one would think that this would increase our zone it would allow us some options um to hire from regions that otherwise we wouldn't have i mean the problem for us is that the pool just isn't there right and did i did i understand sarah do you think that there's the possibility that because we're more comfortable with remote work it might actually open up that pool to something it might it might and that's what my hope is i mean you continue i continue to look at you know who are the female leaders that are entering into the market and very few cios i mean how do we explain that and then you start working backwards and you see that it's it's a problem at every level um all the way back to you know where the education is uh being pursued by these diverse groups makes sense nathan what's your take on this and then maybe you can share a little bit about what you're working on when it comes to diversity and inclusion sure yeah i mean i think you you absolutely have to lean in um and you ha you can't just be on the sideline i've said this before over the last year you've got to get in the game you've got to play hard you got to figure this out and as i.t you know it's it's hiring the right people but it's also looking you know it's people systems and processes it's also looking at our systems and processes right and make sure there's no biases built into them some of them have been around for you know decades like are you re-look at them you know are they right um you know i think you know we're doing a lot of things i'm trying to do a lot of things with an i.t to really to broaden our horizon uh looking at interns um you know we're involved um so early on making sure that we have a strong internship program we're also looking at an apprentice program um that that attracts uh diversity um and i think you know ssc has has really leaned in on this area specifically with women in the workforce and we are a technology company and we're a government contractor you know we have a woman's c ceo half our board is female i mean we have really leaned in there and i think you know we we were i think we've been so you know somewhat successful um on that front but we also need to um lean in you know with other communities uh diverse communities too um and we can do better there and it's a hard hard problem and i agree with you sarah it starts very i have a you know nine-year-old daughter and i keep like you know hoping she's gonna go you know science and them and you know and she really loves it and that's great but it's got to start really early on and i think that's a cultural shift for all of us as i.t leaders but as parents as well
so we are coming close to our time and i just wanted to take a little bit we were talking about the difficulty from a from a diversity and inclusion perspective this is really more overall where stan iowa's are having difficulty finding appropriate skill sets with security leading the list of things that are difficult to fill ai machine learning are a newer area than security uh data science and analytics does this match with where you're having challenges in terms of hiring and bringing talent into your organizations essay an i.t company and we have 25 000 employees we've bought over 500 open wrecks right now in all these areas i think it's crazy you know cyber security is is negative unemployment right i heard that at an mit conference a couple months ago um it is very very tough and you know we try to you know you can fight over pay but in benefits but really you know we we try to attract people based on our mission um you know what we're trying to do and i think each company has a unique mission and that's really where you attract the right talent is someone who's really passionate about what your company's purpose is and that's what we're you know we try to focus on that to differentiate ourselves when we're trying to hire new hires but to sarah's point hopefully with the world kind of opening up you know or the at least for us it's more us-based but um being able to hire across the country because we can hire people in some cases um that can work at home it should open up a little bit sarah i don't know what you're expecting yeah i mean i i think i absolutely agree with you nathan that you know it definitely reflects the priority and the difficulty in each of these roles the thing that i noted the most about cyber security is that even though we put in a lot of effort and we even hire like junior people who may not have all of that talent we invest in training them and then the minute that they are a little bit more mature six months eight months a year into it and then they're gone because the turnover the the pay scale is like so high the talent shortage is so high that the the attrition in this area makes this issue even bigger for us um so doesn't surprise me at all i wish we could do something with it now the one of the strategy that we have adapted is started uh attracting our internal resources train them and and kind of give them diverse um pathways so that they can learn and hopefully continue to stay great well i'm going to turn this back over to tim but before i do just a couple of things one a reminder that this is really a slice of the overall survey there's a lot more data in there about all these i skipped over a slide that really talked about some of the technology priorities uh according to cios for the coming year i think we covered a lot of ground in sarah and nathan i'm really grateful for your insights and your candor about what you're working with what you're wrestling with i want to thank you tim i want to thank you and the cec for the opportunity to do this it's been a real pleasure to go through these results and learn so much from our guests today thank you very much thank you appreciate the opportunity thank you all right thank you john yeah we are at the top of the hour and out of time so i would also like to express my thanks to sarah and nathan for joining us today i'd also like to thank you john thank you for moderating and walking us through the slides and staring this discussion i'd also like to thank idc research producing these great state of the cio surveys each year in the idg virtual production team for creating and managing today's presentation as well and as john said as a reminder you can view more results from the survey as well as read an executive summary of the research by going on cio.com today's presentation will also be available on cio.com website as well as their youtube channel for the ci executive council i'm tim scannell stay safe and see you next time
2021-02-04 14:34
