The role of the CIO has never been more challenging than it is today, whether the CIO sits in telecom or manufacturing, aviation or banking, health or logistics. With the overwhelming amounts of big data, the advent of cloud, the digitization of enterprises and everyone buried in their devices and risks at an all time high in the age of social, who is the new CIO? Who needs to report to him?
Read: CIO Pakistan’s Premier Summit: CXO Verve Congress 2017 is here!
Traditionally it was a tight circle of the CEO/CFO/CIO/CISO. But lately tradition seems to be flying out the door for enterprises that need to be forward thinking. Cloud, quality assurance, risk, the so many platforms as services and many many more words that the CIOs dictionary needs to have, the team reporting to him needs to include the following. Either that or the CIO just got himself four more jobs if he isn’t already doing the job of CISO.. We’re doing a round up of what roles the CIO needs to be looking at today for a sound future enterprise tomorrow. To start of, we’re discussing the Chief Data Officer.
Chief Data Officer
The Chief Data Officer is one of the emerging executive roles gaining traction in some sectors, with research firm Gartner’s latest headline-grabbing prediction that 90% of large organizations will have a Chief Data Officer role by 2019. The role is emerging and not yet fully established – Gartner estimates the number of CDOs and Chief Analytics Officers doubled in 2015 to 1,000, up from 400 in 2014. There is no blueprint for starting a new Chief Data Officer role however, although the above-mentioned analyst and consultancy house has produced a roadmap for the first 100-day ‘honeymoon’ period designed to help new CDOs establish themselves and create perceptions about the new function. Beyond the advice of prepare, assess, plan, act, measure and communicate, the CDO’s main function is to sell data vision.
Chief Data Officer at The Economist, Stephane Pere, said that selling the use case for the role was crucial.
“When I got the job there was no agenda, no goal or job description. I was a sales guy selling banner ads and pages for years so now I’m selling the data vision. I now think of data as a product, data as an enabler, then data as a service and maybe eventually data as a business. Don’t think data as a new revenue stream, but a way to reinforce your current business models.”
