Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.
A new survey by Constellation Research identifies four CIO personas that helps define the skill sets that may be required for the emerging chief digital officer.
Based on how IT strategies are being implemented and managed, the personas are:
Chief integration officer: These CIOs prioritize scaling external systems to help the company connect with customers, partners, suppliers, new employees and other external data sources. Their preferred method of scaling external systems includes managing integration libraries (54 percent), ensuring master data management (51 percent) and identifying systems that can be retired and replaced (42 percent).
Chief infrastructure officer: CIOs with an "infrastructure" persona want to implement disruptive technologies and contracts in order to save the company money on IT costs. Primarily, these CIOs make researching — and deploying — cloud-based solutions a top priority (63 percent). Renegotiating contracts (37 percent) and initiating virtualization (35 percent) are other priorities.
Chief Intelligence officer: These CIOs aim to bring the right information to the right person at the right time, with the right security and format. Primarily, CIOs who fall under this persona invest in data standards and accessibility throughout the organization. While enabling mobile access for employees (59 percent) remains a top priority compared to last year (58 percent), improving data quality (47 percent) and implementing self-service (42 percent) are gaining momentum.
Chief innovation officer: CIOs who focus on innovation have deep knowledge and passion for the business domain and the ability to simplify the communication of technology and its impact on the business. Mobilizing the enterprise is most important (54 percent), while training IT leaders to address business goals (46 percent) and exploring cloud-based solutions (40 percent) also are top priorities.
Constellation expects a chief digital officer role to emerge that may include the personas of the chief innovation officer and the chief intelligence officer. Wrote Constellation, "Though the current debate often centers on whether the CIO or CMO will win out or whether chief digital officers may arise from an expanded role for the CIO, we see these arguments as shortsighted. The role will transcend both the CIO and CMO, as digital initiatives will require new skill sets."
Interviews with 119 respondents also found that up to 80 percent of IT budgets are spent on outdated legacy systems, which CIOs considered the greatest challenge they face. The top priorities for all CIOs were enabling IT employees with mobile technology (65 percent), leveraging analytics and Big Data (60 percent) and transitioning to the cloud (51 percent).