A recent Gartner survey found that CIOs are under immense pressure to optimize the value of digital investment, as IT budgets are said to increase 5 percent on average in 2023.
Uzi Dvir, Global Chief Information Officer at WalkMe, tells Digital Journal that this situation should be seen as a challenge and one that can provide rewards: “It’s exciting to see growing discourse around the expanding office of the CIO. CIOs wield powerful influence that undoubtedly impact a company’s bottom line.”
Typically, a company CIO will overseas the people, processes and technologies within a company’s IT organization. There will be a focus on the delivery of the outcomes that support the goals of the business.
This is a key theme in the WalkMe report ‘The State of Digital Adoption’, which follows on from an assessment conducted the year before.
Looking at the organisation of the corporate world, Dvir notes: “It’s high time CIOs own the responsibility for not only IT and the ROI from technology investments, but for business outcomes themselves.”
These views are based on Dvir’s own experiences: “As CIO, my office shapes every employee’s experience from the first day they receive their computers to the ease and efficiency with which they achieve their business goals.”
Outlining his mission further, Dvir explains: “As CIO, I am ultimately responsible for whether or not employees have the ability to fully harness the technology tools at their fingertips – that includes making sure they use these tools fully.”
Furthermore, Dvir regards his duties as: “It’s also my job to assess and improve how employees are using the technologies we’re investing in as an organization.”
These changes to the duties of the person responsible for information are part of wider industry changes. Here Dvir finds: “Now more than ever, companies need to be measuring and maximizing the value of their IT spend, but investing in employees is more important than ever. In order to thrive in an uncertain economic climate, companies need to ensure that their employees are set up for success.”
There are other factors to consider within the wider change fostered by digital transformation, according to Dvir: “As companies continue to struggle with digital change, I urge CIOs to consider marrying their data-driven mindsets with the change management imperative at hand.”
In a final example, Dvir cites: “We constantly manage change from UI changes across a complex tech stack to new systems and onboarding new employees; the first step in mastering all of it is to gain the right data and put it into action.”
