Voices of the CIO

To highlight key parts of the 2023 State of the CIO research and to hear voices of the CIO, Foundry partnered with IDC/CIO Executive Council for a discussion, hosted by John Gallant, enterprise consulting director at Foundry and Tim Scannell, VP of strategic content at the CIO Executive Council. They were joined by Jo Abernathy, CIO at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and Gary Jeter, EVP & CTO at TruStone Financial Credit Union.

Below are some highlights from the conversation – watch the full 2023 State of the CIO webcast to hear much more from our CIO guests, and the key points from the State of the CIO research.

What are CIOs saying about technology budgets?

Technology budgets are continuing to see growth in 2023. In fact, 91% of CIOs expect their tech budget to either increase or stay the same – the #1 reason for an increase being the need for security improvements. This data point elicits an interesting discussion among the group.

Gary Jeter believes that, “…this is common throughout a lot of the financial industry, the view is, I believe, that technology is recession-proof… my budget this year as far as OPEX grew, a part of that was from consolidating IT spend into technology.” He explains that their focus is to improve productivity through technology and better leverage it to advance analytics to retain and gain customers. 

“In spite of economic concerns, I think the results may indicate that enterprises are taking the long view on tech investments and viewing them as key to either driving down operational costs or driving up revenue or both…,” says Jo Abernathy.

For tech marketers, it’s not always easy selling to the CIO, especially as external factors such as the economy can be so volatile. Just be sure to stay in the know abut what CIOs are researching and their overall yearly business goals.

How do CIOs view the control of technology dollars?

When technology dollars are controlled by IT versus other parts of the organization – our study found that only 43% of all technology dollars are controlled by IT, this was surprising and problematic to our CIOs.

“…I would say it did surprise me … I think that just like being a CFO or a Chief Marketing Officer, you have to have that relevant experience. I feel very strongly that CIOs can’t be accountable in title but not in practice….I think that much like running IT, managing technology vendors and contracts short-term and long term and having strategies around those, it’s just not something that typically is done very well in business areas. They just don’t have the experience and frankly the failures and the scars to learn from it. I just think that this always sub-optimizes technology, even if it’s unintentional, so I am not a fan of Distributing Tech,” says Abernathy.

“…I’m struck when we look at the concern about security, when we think about things like customer experience, I don’t understand how we can do those things well in a distributed fashion …,” explains John Gallant.

Jeter replies, “I’ve had a similar experience where essentially a business unit would look at the IT rate card and a vendor would come to them and say, ‘hey we can deliver a cheaper [solution].’ When in reality, they’re not delivering it cheaper and it creates a lot of tech debt; and then when there are issues IT has to come in and basically rectify it and solve it so I’m sure a lot of the CIOs out there know what I’m talking about because that’s very very painful.”

Are CIOs earning the right to innovate?

Looking at what CIOs are focused on now versus what they want to be focused on in three years – the current list shows security at the top, along with improving IT operations and systems performance, managing infrastructure and applications which could be considered very operationally focused. Three years from now CIOs want to be spending their time driving business innovation, redesigning business processes, aligning IT with business goals. Our experts weighed in on the tension between these two:

“When you look at what they’re focusing on as far as from an Ops performance perspective, you have to earn the right to innovate … for us, yes, we’re focusing on operational excellence but a good portion of 2023 is going to be about delivering different experiences, removing friction from our members or customers…,” says Jeter.

For both CIOs, innovation is important. Abernathy believes, “… that’s one of the wonderful things about being a CIO and one of the things that’s extremely challenging about being the CIO…you have to advance the basics all the time whether it’s dealing with legacy tech or security or operations … and be able to swivel chair and show your business partners that you can help lead in innovation and business opportunity.”

Do CIOs view themselves as revenue drivers?

Within the State of the CIO research, 44% of CIOs say they’re managing a team tasked with creating new revenue generating initiatives, another 24% are part of a team that’s doing that and about a third are not responsible for new revenue generating initiatives. Our panel of CIOs explain how this looks in their organizations.

Abernathy explains, “We are not directly accountable for driving innovation, we are seen as a very critical partner. We have a diversified business group, which is also our strategy group, and they’re always looking at new opportunities to partner and to invest. We have a great relationship with them and they always call us in to get our take and to get our opinion to help shape deals…”

“… The digital banking channel is an IT responsibility, so my Solutions Architect is in charge of development. His responsibility is also called the VP of Innovation, so he’s hitting conferences along with others and looking at all the different fintechs that are out there and understanding the business and understanding how it can remove friction and how can it solve problems …so we are responsible for driving revenue,” says Jeter.

Are CIOs focused on the emerging topic of ESG?

The discussion closed out with a lightning round question about ESG – this is the first year we asked about environmental, social and governance issues in the State of the CIO research, with three different questions regarding if it’s going to shape buying habits and interactions with vendors, and how organizations are dealing with it.

“We are very much in the nascent phases of ESG – we are beginning to gather reports from our key suppliers and to set a strategy for ourselves. I’ll be honest when I thought about this topic I tended to think about things like manufacturing and industries completely outside of my own until I looked at some statistics around data centers and how we contribute to the carbon footprint. And while a lot of that we don’t directly control, as you said, we can certainly control it by our decisions around which suppliers we use, so we’re in the beginning phases of shaping our strategy. I think it’s going to go from a nice-to-have to something you have to have for your key stakeholders…everybody should be focused on it”, Abernathy explains.

“I would agree, we’re really in the beginning stage and so we’re still in the process of looking at how do we tie it in, but it’s the right thing to do so we absolutely have to do it, and it’s also key to attract talent,” says Jeter.

Do CIOs wear many hats?

Although from the 2022 State of the CIO webcast discussion, we wanted to highlight a few takeaways on the many hats that the CIO wears as this is still relevant to their current role.

Today, IT leaders can hold many job titles – not just a chief information officer. Matt Lasmanis, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Sage Therapeutics, for example, said that his role encompasses what someone would classify as a chief data officer, chief analytics officer, digital officer, cybersecurity specialist, operations management, etc.

This is not surprising as the State of the CIO research uncovered that security management is a top priority for IT leaders in 2023. In fact, 47% of CIOs said they are currently focusing on security management, and 70% said they expect their involvement in cybersecurity to increase over the next year. Following this is data privacy/compliance (55%), and data analysis (55%). And just like Matt’s, 85% of CIOs also say that their role is becoming more digital and innovation focused.

“Not just one person makes a strategic difference. But when you bring all these roles together and you weave those capabilities into the strategy of the company, that’s when you’re really experiencing the value of the CIO”. – Matt Lasmanis, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Sage Therapeutics

Matt’s role proves that CIOs wear a lot of hats and are a relied upon role throughout the organization. More than 1/3 (38%) of line of business respondents to the State of the CIO study characterize their CIO as a strategic advisor – someone who proactively identifies business needs/opportunities. Additionally, 25% view the CIO as a consultant, 15% as a risk assessor, 13% view the CIO as a cautious voice of reason, and only 9% as an autonomous player.

When asked about this question, Matt said that he believes these percentages portray a change of the traditional view of the CIO as the risk assessor and the cautious voice to a more forward-leaning, innovative aspect of the role.

Bess Healey, SVP and Chief Information Officer at Synchrony, also made the point that the CIO can be viewed as multiple different people, and it is indeed evolving. She says that, “we (CIOs) have to be careful not to be defined by our titles. We need to be what the business needs us to be, and sometimes that changes on any given day.”

2023 is going to be a year of challenges, changes, and uncertainty, but CIOs believe organizations see IT as a business driver and they are in better shape than three years ago.