The changing role of the CIO has been widely scrutinised and contains many parts; but a new piece of research from Vendavo argues CIOs, as well as CTOs, will team up more often in future with CMOs and CFOs to drive profit for their organisations.
The study, which was conducted in collaboration with Patrick Reinmoeller, professor of strategic management at the Cranfield School of Management in Bedford, gives more of an idea of how the C-suite needs to work in harmony for better business results.
Plenty still needs to be done, according to the research; worryingly, almost four in 10 of the CMOs and CFOs polled said they would not know how to increase margin if they were tasked with it tomorrow; yet more than half of those using real-time data in their analysis are performing better than market expectations.
The need for more data, and better utilisation of it, is a key theme throughout the report. 43% of respondents say their sales teams still use gut feel, while two thirds rely predominantly on the relationship with the customer.
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“Pressure on margins has never been greater, while global competition has never been tougher. Businesses have to build new capabilities to understand the market and their customers, pick up the weak signals, make the right calls and swiftly align resources to seize emerging opportunities or avert threats,” said Reinmoeller.
“The best performing CFOs and CMOs are already using IT to influence how strategies are developed,” he added. “Providing intuitive tools that offer those making the critical judgments with better insights based on better data is going to be core to raising the level of how organisational knowledge is created and deployed.”
Research from Harvey Nash and KPMG released in May argued that, far from diminishing, the role of the CIO going forward would mean more reporting to the CEO than previously, as well as greater skills and expertise in big data analytics among others.
Date: June 28, 2016