CIOs and CTOs need to take on more active roles and establish new objectives that impact an organization’s technological and cultural aspects in today’s rapidly evolving business world. They are responsible for ensuring that their companies stay abreast of emerging trends and technologies. Numerous new technologies will start to appear in the coming years, and those that already exist will continue to advance. CIOs and CTOs must determine which new technologies are worth investing in and which are likely to become obsolete soon in order to stay competitive in the market. They should also have a distinct vision for the organization’s IT strategy and infrastructure. In this blog, we’ve highlighted a few of the top priorities for CIOs and CTOs in 2023.
Technology has become an essential component of businesses today. Businesses undergo a significant digital transformation due to the rapid technological changes we are currently facing to benefit all levels and departments. Numerous organizations have undoubtedly faced difficulties over the last two years as a result of the sudden restructuring of their operating environments brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and employees working in various settings. The way that businesses use technology and run their operations, as well as how they offer new services and customers, are all changing dramatically. The entire landscape for businesses, organizations, and how they conduct business has been altered by Covid. Teamwork, which is defined as the capacity of individuals to work together towards a shared vision and to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives, is essential for corporate success. Top-level employees in an organization have duties and spheres of influence. Due to the rapid growth of organizations and their transformation from small to large, executive roles have become commonplace.
The CIO and CTO both have significant roles to play within an organization, and these roles frequently change to include new responsibilities, skills, and knowledge. They must have a thorough understanding of their organization’s operations. This is because IT systems play a crucial role in ensuring an organization’s productivity and profitability and are crucial to the success or failure of projects and products. From managing ever-increasing cyber threats to implementing the cloud, with either stagnant or reduced resources, including budget and qualified staffing.
It is essential that CIOs and CTOs keep their business operations in check that are effective and efficient in building employee morale and the company’s overall performance. They are in charge of overseeing and managing ongoing operations as well as general security systems.
Functions and Priorities for the year 2023
- Create an organization’s technical vision
Given how quickly technology is developing, it is crucial to stay current. The CTOs must first collaborate with the CEO and other executives to create a technical strategy. The executives can assist with setting goals, coming up with ideas, debating options, and analysing risks. The technical strategy’s compatibility with the company’s primary business goals is equally important. They concentrate on the needs of the company, its future direction, and how technology can help it accomplish its objectives. Their objectives should include developing a strong understanding of the business and participating actively in initiatives that directly drive revenue, understanding how businesses can become a substantial part of the digital economy, and assisting in defining a concrete path for the business to become more omnichannel-enabled and customer-centric.
- Developing digital business strategies
An increased emphasis on new tools like artificial intelligence, workflow streamlining tools, and robotic process automation will be part of our digital transformation journey. The global pandemic has greatly accelerated the growth of the digital trend. In 2023 and beyond, digitalization will continue to be a top priority. CTOs can help lead digital initiatives with a shared vision across the organization at the heart of the strategy. CTOs can anticipate having a bigger leadership role in the digital economy. Concentrating on utilizing cutting-edge technologies to alter the business strategy, goods, and services of the organisation have become a priority in this digitized zone. Steps for accomplishing digital business objectives are creating a roadmap for new business models and capabilities in collaboration with CIOs, ensuring digital collaboration and setting up the necessary e-commerce infrastructure and working with business functions to comprehend potential customers and market requirements and translate them into digital products and services by bringing in strategic thinking for the company.
- Management & Efficiency of the Cloud
The services that businesses use to prepare for and move to the cloud and determine what kind of virtual infrastructure is required will be crucial to the migration project’s success because moving to the cloud is not as simple as initially thought. Managing resource usage, enhancing active workflows while shutting down inactive ones, and matching the required workload to the cloud offers are the top concerns and challenges. Two other significant concerns are staying within budget and defending budget increases. The ability or lack to anticipate the needs of the business is one of the main worries. It appears to be a win-win situation with the majority of software companies switching to cloud solutions and businesses fully embracing the cloud model to reduce hardware infrastructure costs and move processing power from devices to the cloud. However, given the size and scope of the change needed to fully take advantage of this opportunity, CIOs and CTOs cannot do it alone. For their organization to successfully migrate to the cloud and reap the benefits of cloud adoption, CIOs and CTOs must make sure that it has the necessary levels of talent, processes, and technology. As organizational and cultural factors can have a big impact on a project’s success, businesses should also take these into account when adopting the cloud.
- Increased attention to cybersecurity
For many years, the top CIO priority has been cybersecurity, and this trend will continue in 2023. In order to consistently make sure that their company’s systems are safe and secure from threats both inside and outside the organization, they must adopt a proactive mindset in this area. When it comes to cybersecurity, employees pose the greatest threat to any organization. The risk within any company lies with those who have been trusted with access to the systems, from deliberate acts of espionage by disgruntled, disaffected, or corrupt employees to laziness or negligence. Cybercrime is constantly changing, and the threats are also becoming more advanced. This includes hacking, phishing, ransomware, malware, and viruses. And cybercriminals are doing brisk business everywhere; even the best CIO faces these difficulties. To safeguard systems and data from this persistent and growing threat, it will be of utmost importance to stay ahead of new and emerging threats, identify ongoing risks, make sure systems are protected, and ensure that employees are properly educated on cybersecurity risks.
Industry Leader’s Perspective
Balaji Raghunathan, Vice President, Technology & Solutions, Digital Experience at ITC Infotech in a conversation with Neelam Singh, Practice Director at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, about the key priorities for the CIOs and digital leaders in the coming 2023 and beyond, has quoted that “If we look at where we are heading, we are looking at a convergence of the physical world with the virtual world. That’s where the metaverse is coming in a big way. Though people are looking at it only from a POC perspective, there are some use cases like the digital twins, as well as educational and some kind of marketing areas where it is actually looking relevant. But from an adoption perspective, there is still some room to go but essentially that’s a combination of VR and blockchain and AI. And also, with 5G coming in, we will see a lot of this convergence leading to more and more use cases. So that’s accelerating the convergence of the physical and digital realms. Now if we look at the next set of areas where you know that technology is actually transforming business, as we saw about chatGPT, although it is not fully equal to a human, the advancements to what you see over standard chatbots is just simply vast“.
There are lots of new technologies coming up, especially in the last few years. The technology world has been booming like anything. There are lots of new technologies as well as new applications to existing technologies which are coming into businesses and our personal lives. Predictive analysis is very useful in terms of how we can put our strategies and how we can put our operations in place. That’s extremely important in terms of adopting these new technologies. So, when it comes to new technologies, organisations always have to be on their toes in terms of their adoption because there is fear of being left out which can make it very difficult for growth to take place, and you won’t be able to compete.
In a conversation with Atul Govil, Chief Transformation Officer & Head (SAP & IT) – Corporate, India Glycols, he quotes “One critical aspect which we need to figure out is that in this post covid era which we call the new normal, is significantly different from the pre covid times. And we have seen a huge shift in the way customers are engaging with businesses. We are seeing new peaks in digital transactions, payments, and collaborations. Many of the government practices and other related aspects are all getting digitized. The workplace is increasingly and progressively becoming digitized. It’s important for technology leaders to be relevant and digital in current times. To stay competitive and successful you need to be digitally driven to achieve your fullest potential”.
On a Concluding Note,
CTOs and CIOs can expect 2023 to be a busy and important year. Given this, the top priorities for them will be to adapt their organizations to the post-pandemic world in a way that pleases both employees and customers, embrace technology to enhance customers’ online experiences, use data for smarter targeting and relationship-building, and, finally, close the skills gap by upskilling employees or hiring more talent. To deliver the skills, capabilities, and capacity needed to support business continuity, CIOs and CTOs must collaborate closely with senior leadership which entails working with current team members to make sure they have the appropriate skills and experience, as well as looking for and hiring new talent as needed.
Author
Sayeri Roy Content Writer at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions
