The role of the CIO is rapidly evolving. From the 'MIS guy' of close to a decade ago to a business support functionary – CIOs are fast becoming important business enablers. The ones who are thinking and articulating business are finding themselves on management committees, and even the board – they're becoming instrumental in shaping the futures of their companies.

Gone are the days when the CIO's utility was only in 'keeping the lights on' in the organisation. Granted, the largest chunk of her budgets and a big share of her day is still given over to ensuring everything is up and running – however, that belies the complete makeover, nay down-to-the-core transformation her role is undergoing.

Closer to the Top
CIOs mostly don't report to the CFO any more. Only 40 percent of our respondents did that, clearly reflecting their coming into their own. This depicts a more strategic role of IT in an organisation, rather than being only an expense. If the CIOs report to a managing committee/ CEO or COO, then their role is more towards growing the business or making a positive impact in some way.

Also, slowly the penetration of IT in the business has increased multifold and so has the understanding of the CIO of the business processes of the company. S/he is one of the few people in the company who touch all aspects of the business – be it the supply chain, marketing, sales, production, HR, fnance or strategic decision making. That CIOs are increasingly sought out by their business counterparts to help make business decisions is clearly reflected in what we found: 65 percent of our respondent CIOs say they are on the management committees of their organisations.

On the other hand the verdict is still out on IT being considered a cost centre in the organisation. About half the CIOs say that IT is still a cost for the company, while for the other half it is either not considered a cost centre or they are undecided. In comparison with last year’s survey, this is a six percent increase in companies that consider IT as a cost centre.

Ineffectiveness
While CIOs are moving up the ladder, there are various reasons why they are still ineffective. Compared with last year, when the largest reason for ineffectiveness was the IT budget (26 percent), this year the largest reasons have emerged to be 'Aligning IT with business goals' and 'Disconnect with other C-level peers in the company' (31 percent).

Understandably lack of budgets was a major concern in every area during 2009, but 2010 shows that CIOs still do not understand business that well and cannot communicate well with their peers. As you would see in the cover story, all the senior CIOs featured in the story stress on the importance of communication skills in the CIO. They must speak to the business in the language that they understand and not in IT jargon, which will be dismissed without much thought.

As Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, CIO, Reliance Capital says in his opinion article, “CIOs have to play a dual role and speak two different languages. They must speak the language of business while speaking to business leaders and while speaking to their technology managers they must get their hands dirty and translate that business into a language of technology that the IT managers can understand.”

Signs of Resurgence
Jobs and budgets are probably among the most significant indicators of what companies think about their prospects. On the job opportunities front, there have been many more movements in the CIO space this year than the last. At 10 percent of our respondents, the number of CIOs who are less than a year into their jobs this year is more than tripled from last year. This indicates a lot more opportunities in the market.

Last year a very healthy 69 percent of CIOs thought that IT budgets will go up in the next year, and this year the mood is even more optimistic: 77 percent of our respondents think that their IT budgets will see an upward trend in the coming year – indicating that the economy is looking up and is demanding more investment. We might cautiously say that this is an indicator of good times to come.

This may also indicate that, pushed into action by the economic downturn last year, companies have latched on to the power of technology to save costs and unlock capital. Therefore they are now looking to IT even more as they expand their operations in anticipation of better times.

Priorities
The top three IT priorities remain unchanged from last year. Strategic planning and aligning IT with organisational goals, Integrating systems and processes and Implementing security and privacy measures are still the top three priorities for CIOs as they were in the last year.

Aligning with the priorities, CIOs still spend most of their time dealing with business executives (80 percent of our respondents), which is 1.5 times more than the time spent on dealing with their teams or vendors. This represents an increased thrust in aligning IT closely with the business to ensure better returns.

CIOs are no doubt growing in their role, budgets are on the rise and so are the opportunities to shift from one company to another, in pursuit of bigger challenges, so things are looking up. What we'd like to see in 2011 is a clear sense of the resolution of the age-old debates of business IT alignment and the need for better communication with c-level peers that still plague the community. Perhaps one is being a tad too optimistic, but we hope that the community will take heart from the positive sentiments in the market and methodically work through these problems in the coming year.

—Geetaj Channana

geetaj.channana@9dot9.in