Although generative AI may be the latest focus of the C-suite, your CIO mandate for 2024 is a familiar one: direct the way the business uses emerging technologies to increase productivity and revenue. The biggest challenge? Making sure that investments in foundational tech — such as cloud systems, data and IT operations — actually pay off while looking ahead at new technology that can enhance efficiency and customer service.
Core to your success will be educating your company’s other leaders, including the board, on why these projects matter and what they mean to the business now and in the future. Where it makes sense, let leaders get hands-on with proof of concepts and experience how tech is changing the way employees or customers interact. Keep an eye too on seemingly exotic technologies, such as quantum computing. This is expected to soon start leaving the laboratories of large technology companies to enter the daily lives of organisations of all sizes.
Five topics currently shaping the technology agenda are:
Modernising data to unlock value
Tech transformation requires a strong data foundation. A new ERP system or similar will be dependent on the quality of the data that it uses. It needs to be cleaned, secure, compliant and up-to-date.
Foundational issues around governance, privacy and cybersecurity are critical to break down organisational silos and give the business an enterprise-wide view of data.
Investing in data (and AI) is identified as a key pillar for business model reinvention, in PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey - Australian insights. It unlocks benefits that can catapult organisations into a new realm of competitiveness.
Prioritising cloud engineering
If you aren’t focused on cloud fundamentals while thinking beyond migration, you may struggle to realise the value of tech investments. That’s why cloud engineering capabilities matter. The way companies use cloud-native software development to migrate data, update infrastructure and applications, and speed up idea realisation helps generate meaningful ROI.
How you engage with your business C-suite peers is also key to delivering positive cloud-powered outcomes. This critical collaboration includes working with tax leaders to potentially leverage R&D credits to fund innovation, with risk leaders at the outset of a system transformation, to identify what could possibly go wrong, and with business owners, to understand how application testing and performance translates into success.
Evolving your IT operating model
Huge expectations for technology put increasing pressure on CIOs to deliver measurable results. As companies adopt new technology-driven business changes, the IT function needs to adapt its operations to meet the growing needs for related tech skills and talent. Tech leaders are balancing in-house infrastructure, applications and specialised skills they need in house alongside those that are better procured through strategic managed services. For instance, a company with multiple ERP systems may find it more efficient and cost-effective to automate and manage application security and control monitoring as a service. This would allow them to allocate internal IT resources to cloud-native development and GenAI projects, including those aimed at accelerating the software development process.
As part of IT transformation, it’s important to look inward as well. Do you have the skills to guide business strategy that a modern CIO needs? It’s critical that you regularly engage with the board to provide updates on tech strategy, cybersecurity, risk mitigation and innovation initiatives. And, to address dynamic costs like cloud management, work closely with your CFO.
Scaling GenAI for new business models
As a technology leader, you’re likely playing catch-up if you aren’t spearheading Gen AI strategy at your company. Central to a thorough GenAI strategy is an ‘AI factory’ approach, which looks beyond individual use cases and applications. Such an approach considers how to effectively scale GenAI across the business by identifying and deploying common patterns, such as deep retrieval. The exponential productivity gains can be significant enough to boost short-term profits while enabling new business models — for example, hyper-personalisation for every customer — that had previously been prohibitively expensive.
A transformative GenAI approach is rooted in trust and integrates responsible AI from the outset, considering strategy, governance, controls and ongoing practices. It also prioritises workforce transformation and engaging employees in the company’s transformation to redefine their own work and build new skills.
Increasingly, GenAI strategies will also objectively consider sustainability impact and optimise productivity gains alongside carbon usage.
Innovating through emerging tech
Savvy CIOs aren’t focused only on AI. They recognise the potential of combining one or more technologies to drive true innovation. For example, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT) and AI can collectively work together in a supply chain to confirm the authenticity of data, verify identities and enable secure multiparty transactions. Wherever you focus, prioritise trust. How do you develop technology and engage with customers, business partners and communities in a responsible and ethical way?
This is an abridged version of an article that originally appeared in PwC’s TechEffect. If you would like to learn more about how we can help in Australia, please contact Matthew Benwell.
