This is how CIOs can drive value creation amid pandemic

Mumbai, Nov 30 (IANS) To accelerate value creation in the pandemic, CIOs and IT executives should focus on three key areas -- leading from anywhere, nurturing connections and reaching beyond, a Gartner report said on Tuesday.

As organisations continue to emerge from the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, CIOs and IT executives will need to seek to generate value in fundamentally new ways, said Mbula Schoen, senior research director at Gartner, during its IT Symposium/Xpo India.

By the end of 2022, the share of knowledge workers working remotely will increase to 47 per cent, up from 27 per cent in 2019.

"CIOs and IT executives should focus on leading anywhere by ensuring enterprise and talent readiness; nurture connections to ensure ecosystem readiness; and reach beyond by using technology and society readiness," according to the report.

Research shows that currently, 41 per cent of employees identify as business technologists, meaning they report outside of IT departments and create technology or analytics capabilities for internal or external business use.

"Organisations that successfully enable business technologists are 2.6 times more likely to accelerate digital business outcomes than organisations that do not empower business technologists," according to the report.

"Where we work, where technology leadership comes from and where IT is produced has shifted," said Schoen. "CIOs and IT executives must capitalize on changes around the future of work to propel their teams and their enterprises forward."

According to Daryl Plummer, distinguished research vice president and Gartner Fellow, CIOs need to reconsider how they think about value, and how they get to that value.

"They need a more expansive view of the role technology plays in doing so. And they must be bold to reach beyond the ewhere' to discover freedom," he added.

The technology can help CIOs gain freedom from historical insights, legacy business practices and bias.

According to Gartner, through 2024, 40 per cent of people will intentionally devalue their personal data, making it difficult to monetise.

"AI-based systems can create artificial -- or synthetic -- data sets that are valid, predictive and so accurate that personal privacy may not need to be violated in the future," it added.