The information technology is an environment that goes through changes increasingly faster, and that has been changing the way people have fun and work when using the internet. Such new scenario requires that the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are always updated with the main trends in the market, forecasting the demands of the companies they work at and focusing their efforts on strategic activities to the business.
Following-up the IT market evolution worldwide is a critical factor so that CIO achieves his/her space internally and contributes to the organization’s competitiveness. Understand what CIO needs to know to get anticipated to the problems and to focus on the business in the next few years.
CIO and CFO getting closer
A trend of change in CIOs’ position has been happening. If in the past the profile was of a Professional of the technical area that was promoted, today the trend is of an specialist from the business or financial area. It is due to the approximation between CIO and CFO and to the difficulty for both to speak the same language. At some companies, CIO position does not exist anymore, but the technical professional that develops qualifications in the business area has great advantage when disputing such openings and, with no doubt, he/she does not take risks.
The future is digital
It is possible to note that, in the last few years, many of the solutions to increase the sales and productivity of the companies went through resources related to the digital world. In many organizations, the traditional CIO may become CDO, that is, the Chief Digital Officer. Thus, CIO has to develop specific knowledge of the most recent technologies and get prepared to deliver projects of high technical complexity, everything with an optimized budget management.
The mobile workers
It is not necessary to refer to researches and studies to notice that the mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, are already part of people’s reality, bringing impacts also to the work environment. Do not get startled if the desktop computers disappear from your company in the next few years!
With that, CIOs shall be attentive to the movable and cloud computing solutions that allow access from anywhere, favoring the collaboration between employees in the projects and processes. Thus, it is possible that very different sectors like sales and logistics optimize their day-by-day work and feel stimulated to search for better results.
Measuring everything
With the broad use of systems to perform the greatest part of the tasks performed in the companies, it is possible to measure several aspects of the business. The new Technologies allow to store, share, measure, and analyze a huge amount of data in real time, whether they are related to the company’s processes or to the behavior of its consumers.
At this time of Big Data, CIO has to be attentive so that the information generated by the company and by the market is stored and analyzed in a proper manner, supporting the strategic decisions related to the business.
The IT decision makers that do not measure quality indicators shall to start to do that as soon as possible. There is no space anymore to companies that do not have IT area as competitive differential, going much far from providing support to the systems and “fire fighting”.
Increasingly more agile
The information technology has becoming more accessible to several layers of population. Because of that, it is natural that the companies’ employees fell increasingly more dependent on high-performance machines and systems. It requires that CIO assures required resources to the upgrade of the technologies used by the company, providing for proper work conditions to the collaborators.
New behavior
The need of greater agility also impacts the way companies develop their systems and software. The new projects need to be performed in a more agile manner and suitable to changes: software that takes years to be produced, based on hundreds of small sequential and dependent stages, do not match to the companies’ need anymore. The minimum viable product (MVP), from agile methodologies, starts to be applied in great scale. The companies may not spend so much time anymore in development without small market tests to assess results and usability.
The updates also need to be made every time and not only in periodical cycles, as formerly.
With all of that, it is not difficult to notice that the IT world is in continuous evolution. It is the CIO’s liability to identify the main market trends and bring them to the company as soon as possible. Remember that it does not mean to get into the last fashion and loose the focus, but to be attentive to the changes that came to stay.
