As we enter the new world of digitalisation, CIOs are having to quickly change the way they work – but most of them feel they are unprepared for the new way of doing business.
According to the Gartner 2014 CIO Agenda, a massive 51% of CIOs around the world don’t believe they are able to deal with the flood of digital initiatives and technologies.
In South Africa, 63% of South African CIOs don’t think they have the right skills, resources, capabilities or influence to ride the digital wave.
George Ambler, executive partner at Gartner, explains that we are entering the third era of enterprise IT, that of digitalisation. But, with the era of industrialisation of IT still with us, CIOs are having to keep their existing systems running and relevant, while building new systems that embrace the concepts of digitalisation.
“Digitalisation is about innovation at the business model level,” he says. “It’s about going to market with business models that will disrupt industry. And it’s a huge opportunity to transform the industry.”
To meet the new challenges, CIOs need to adopt a three-part response that involves creating powerful digital leadership, renovating the IT core; and building a bimodal capability.
CIOs around the world were asked where they have committed budget for 2014, and the results show that most organisations are investing in a mix of core technologies – infrastructure, data centre, ERP, cloud, networking, security, industry-specific applications and legacy modernistation – and new technologies – business intelligence/analytics, mobile, digitalisation/digital marketing, CRM and collaboration.
