How the CIO’s job is changing

Newer roles have strengthened the basis of IT infrastructure and diversified the job of a typical CIO

Diksha Gupta

Scroll though the hottest tech jobs for 2016 and the role of a chief digital officer will, in all probability, catch your eye. The reason is simple. It is hot and definitely happening. This is not the only new job title that will attract you. There are many more. In fact, gone are the days when chief information officers used to be the bosses of the IT-related stuff in an organisation. 

Today, we have a CTO (chief technology officer), a CDO (chief digital officer) and a CISO (chief information security officer) working along with a CIO and handling different streams of IT in the company. The newer roles have strengthened the basis of IT infrastructure for sure, but they have diversified the job of the typical CIO. The question here is: have these new job titles diluted the importance of a CIO? 

"Earlier, it was just the CTO who was doing it all, including infrastructure, security and developers’ engagement. Then came the CIO whose role was not just to look at technology infrastructure part but also align it with the business objectives.  But as the company grows, there is a need for leaders in specific domains," says Ekta Mittal, head-product at AskmeBazaar, an online marketplace. “So now, there are CTOs, CPOs, CDOs, and several such roles who look after different aspects of the job that and have an expertise in that specific domain. And each one has his/her own importance. 

"So if you ask whether the role of a CIO has diluted with the presence of other roles like CPO, CTO and CDO, my answer is 'no'. In fact, CIO is now playing a complete role where he/she is overlooking the entire scheme of things. In some companies where they don’t have a separate security officer, CIO looks after the security aspect as well. The aligned roles help a CIO reach his/her goals in a well-defined and improvised manner."

Piyush Jha, AVP-engineering and delivery head-retail & ecommerce at GlobalLogic, an offshore software R&D services company, however, has a different take on this. 

"If there is a perception in the industry that the role of CIOs has diluted, there is a strong reason behind it. What is continuously happening today is that enterprises are getting more and more digitised. Companies like Uber, Ola and Myntra are disrupting the market to make the scenario more digitised. This has driven the traditional industry to operate in a different manner. The erstwhile CIOs are not really geared up to take the new role. A CIO of yesteryears cannot become a chief digital officer of tomorrow because he does not understand the digital age. He would still keep acting in a CIO mode, trying to optimise the efficiency of his existing infrastructure. That is insufficient."

Abhishek Dwivedi, director-India technology at Cimpress, a company in mass customisation and web-to-print, seconds Piyush's thoughts. "Times are changing and so are the roles. There is a clear distinction in each of these roles and there is no single umbrella under which they can be brought together, because of the diversified functions these different people perform. However, despite such diversity in their roles, they cannot work in isolation and they have a complementing role to play. So, for me, the role of CIO is not going away. However, it will just get very IT infrastructure related with times to come."

The diversification of role surely doesn’t mean that the role of CIO may gradually disappear. "One would not deny that there is a place for CIOs and that will not go away, and he/she will keep doing what he/she is doing, but the role of a CDO is a new one and it would be someone who looks at the digital properties of the company or the information management of the company," says Jha.

In a modern day scenario, we are talking about goods to be delivered within a time span of a few hours. Companies also need to predict the time at which things will be delivered. So, this is an entire gamut of new things and different people with relevant expertise are required for such roles. Experts believe that these upcoming roles are far more visible and important and impacting the revenue of the company. 

"With the new aides that the CIO has, the IT decision making is now more comprehensive and precise. This is definitely leading to a better IT scenario than ever before," says Mittal.

diksha.gupta@timesgroup.com