Indian chief information officers (CIOs) appear to be more progressive as compared with their global counterparts and are looking to ‘make innovation real’ and ‘expand business impact’ for their respective organisations.
A reasearch by IBM, based on a survey of 100 Indian CIOs, found that 70 per cent of Indian CIOs are integrating business and technology to promote innovation for their respective organisations, as compared to 47 per cent of the global CIOs. Almost 64 per cent of Indian CIOs proactively push information technology (IT) as an innovation element compared with 55 per cent of global CIOs.
Also, over 70 per cent of Indian CIOs are expecting to explore newer channels for end-customer interactions and are anticipating greater levels of integration and transparency with customers within the next five years, compared with 56-64 per cent CIOs globally.
For the Indian CIOs, the three most important areas to focus for future are business intelligence and analytics, risk mitigation and governance, and virtualisation. Where as, business model change, technological factors and security factors are the key challenges. The other worries include globalisation, regulatory concerns, internal customers, budgets and people skills.
The study defines a successful CIO as the one who blends three pairs of roles — visionary and pragmatist, value creator and cost cutter, and business leader and IT manager.