After many years of prioritising digital transformation and innovation, many CIOs report that their top goal is to support operational efficiency.
Currently, many CIOs are investing in technologies that support them address several business needs, citing that technology can transform processes as well as improve employee satisfaction, whilst creating more efficient operations.
According to a CIO survey, 837 IT leaders and 201 line-of-business participants answered a range of questions concerning future IT Strategies.
The top five needs are: increasing operational efficiency (45%), increasing cybersecurity protections (44%), transforming existing business processes: 38%, improving the customer experience: 36%, and improving profitability: 27%.
The pressure for operational efficiency is less about identifying technologies to help cut costs, but it is more about establishing how IT can improve operational efficiency whilst meeting key business needs. These include transforming processes and improving customer and employee experiences.
Investing in technologies such as automation and AI-based tools provides the potential for businesses to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their IT processes. Key initiatives, including robotic process automation and implementing software with built-in AI capabilities will help to shift workers to higher-value activities, generating further efficiencies and improve user experiences.
Businesses are moving more workloads to the cloud as well as investing in data and analytics — with the aim of employing those insights to understand where an organisation can grow and how it can move further into the digital space.
Furthermore, more resources are spent on improving the team’s security skills and implementing next-generation security tools, including those that use AI. This will hopefully improve threat detection.
Source: CIO
