D V Seshu Kumar, Asst Vice President – IT Head, Orient Cement Limited

“The responsible person of information in an organization is the CIO, who manages the plan for how information is organized, accumulated, and analysed. As importance of information increasingly becoming the asset to the organization and revenue, the role of the CIO is changing and becoming more business enablers because of the ability to understand and manage information.

Today’s CIOs are recognized as business transformers and members of senior executive team. Now a days CIOs are much more actively engaging in strategy framework, enabling new and user friendly changes, and involving himself to solving business problems or creating new approach to achieve business goals. Analysis says now a day CIOs are spending more than 50% of their time for innovations. These activities includes digitation, digitation is a big subject itself like IoT, AI, Augmented Reality (AR) etc., Also working towards reducing IT costs, mitigating enterprise risks and leveraging automation.

There are many challenges in current scenario to transforming CIOs vision into an action and measuring the business results. Conveyancing for introduction of new solution while replacing the disruption of existing workaround. How can ROI calculated while improving efficiencies of the operations etc., balancing the needs to influence business strategy.

On any given day, CIOs are poised for the unexpected, leading an organization that solves a myriad of problems for customers, both internal and external. Information Technology functions are nervous system of the organization.

CIOs are having tremendous opportunities to become top business executives, not single-minded IT geeks. Potential CIOs know how to change the dynamics of the Organization by refining information and leveraging technology for business advantage. In my view it is very important that they would devote their time and energy to gain understanding of the business inside-and-out and functional knowledge is very important for adopting any technology this will help in reinvent their role as innovator, as well as what emerging technology trends can add significant marketing value and accelerate business performance.

IT strategic planning is an integral part of the organization strategy, IT needs to set the right priority, build up strong partnerships with business managers and make IT a trusted business partner. Digitization’s not only leverage Information Technology department (IT) but, more organising, strategically, structured way apply information and technology across the business to attain enterprise-wide digital capabilities. Dedicated efforts with a strong project plan will help seamless adoption of new technology across the organization.

Technology becomes the game changer and innovation driver for Organization. CIOs are often innovative outliers because they have technological vision and awareness and share their fresh viewpoints on how Information Technology can bring growth opportunities for the organization.

In my view some of the traditional CIOs are often live in the silo, take the inside-out lens to run transactional way. The outlier CIOs are innovative business leaders who can step out of the conventional thinking.

Modern CIOs have to provide INNOVATION services to business peers. The focal point is business, not on technology alone itself.

Data management capabilities are prerequisite for modern CIOs it helps to the organization ability ingest data in an increasingly larger volume at a faster pace. Analysis from reputed agencies says that by 2020, 60% of large enterprises will create data management or monetization capabilities, it enhance enterprises functions, competitiveness, and creating new sources of revenue, and also says organizations on an average expect above 20% of their revenues comes from data monetization.

Cloud computing has become a disruptive force in Information Technology. Private , public and hybrid approaches. However, with perceived benefits of agility and cost savings, CIOs are under pressure to shift in that direction and making appropriate balance between the cloud and on premise.

Security, naturally external, internal and application security are all growing challenges for businesses, and are naturally at the top of the list of priorities for IT. Concerns focus on such issues and can have an up-to-date disaster recovery plan in place.

“Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other” – Bill Gates.”