The CIO Playbook for 2024

2023 was expected to be a bumpy ride as I mentioned in the CIO Playbook for 2023. It turned out much bumpier than expecting. Unfortunately, there is still a good bit of uncertainty going into 2024. The good news is that 2024 should give CIOs a moment to take a breath as things settle down a bit.

The Macro View of 2024

While the official end of year numbers for 2023 are not in yet, initial indications show a more stable 2024 in a positive direction. That is a good sign considering the past 18 months of instability. Overall, 2024 budgets are showing positive movement in response to expectations.

CIO Focus Areas

Beyond the macro factors, CIOs are refocusing their attention on the ‘big three’ functional areas. These closely align with focus areas for many executive leadership teams. The big three are customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and business operations including supply chain. Each of the three core areas are incredibly complicated yet offer great, new opportunities for enterprises. And technology sits at the heart of each of these.

The Big Three

• CX (Customer Experience). Customer experience is not new. However, enterprises will double-down on their ability to understand and engage with customers to create new, innovative and positive experiences. New technology and methodologies will change how enterprises engage from marketing to support. Artificial intelligence (AI), and more recently generative AI, will drive greater insights for automation routines and to improve how employees engage with customers from in-person to chatbots to contact centers. Look for greatly improved seamless multichannel engagement across platforms including contact center as a service (CCaaS) and cross-platform integration.
• EX (Employee Engagement). Employees are the core of an enterprise. New platforms and sophisticated technology will provide a more human-centric approach versus looking at employees as simple resources. New platforms are working to provide the unique needs of individual employees at scale. Providing new insights, opportunities, skills and feedback offer wholly new opportunities that mature an enterprise’s culture and the relationship they have with their organization. Improving employee experience will have a direct effect on customer experience.
• Business Operations/ Supply Chain. Understanding how a business makes money and spends money is key. It is no longer adequate to simply understand the basics of this question. Business operations are a sophisticated engine that is becoming increasingly more complicated. Understanding it intimately, understanding potential levers to pull and the outcomes is an art. As operating a business becomes more complicated, especially at a global level, technology plays a central role.

Beyond the Big Three

• Financial Management. Rising in prominence in 2022 and continuing into 2023, the term du jour was FinOps. New methodologies from subscription and consumption-based solutions added complexity to financial management. In the end, CIOs need to ensure that they have a solid understanding of their financial position…not just in terms of spend, but value. Too many times the focus is on ‘cost’ and ‘spend’ without consideration for ‘value’. Yet value is the definitive guide to understanding the true impact of costs. Without understanding value, organizations run the risk of cutting costs that create value for their organization.
• Contract Management. Many CIOs took a solid swipe at reviewing and renegotiating contracts in 2023. This is common practice when there is an economic downturn or lull in business performance. Contract review should happen on a regular basis. Relying on a good methodology helps guide this process to ensure the right contracts and terms are in place that align with the objectives as they change.
• Simplification. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Simplification is a mantra that needs to be part of the ongoing culture, not a project. As technology and systems get more complicated, simplification is crucial to reduce risk, costs and time to insights and value.
• Strategic Planning. Now is a good time to review the multi-year strategic plan. While the 3-5 year strategic plan was the norm several years ago, today, many organizations are pulling in the timeline to 1-3 years due to the sheer number of variables. Consider how this aligns with the overall organization’s objectives.
• Risk Management. Uplevel the conversation from cybersecurity and ransomware to risk management. Risk management aligns with your board’s consideration and takes the conversation beyond just cybersecurity and ransomware to other risk vectors related to IT. Both cybersecurity and ransomware should still have plans that are collaborative, well documented, and regularly exercised. Risk management should include additional factors like technical debt, BC/DR processes, organizational bench and more. Balance and communication are key to finding the right level of risk.
• Operational Insights. Line of sight to operational metrics and insights are key to understanding and limiting business impact. For example, new systems are using AI to forecast operational impact. Have a gameplan to anticipates issues and the resulting actions that are regularly exercised.
• ESG. ESG was an up-and-coming topic a few years back but took a back seat for many enterprises in 2023 due to priority shifts related to the economic changes. Expect that to change in 2024 as a global resurgence in ESG along with new regulatory requirements emerge. CIOs play a role in all three of the ESG pillars with an emphasis on the E&G. ESG is not an IT-centric topic, however both the IT organization and technology play a central role.

Technology

Drilling deeper into the IT playbook, specific technology areas will take center stage in 2024.

• Generative AI. No discussion would be complete without a discussion about generative AI (genAI). GenAI hit a feverish pitch in 2023 and while the overall temperature has cooled ever so slightly, it continues to play a key role in 2024. 2024 will give CIOs the ability to take a breather and consider where genAI plays a role and where it doesn’t. As with the meteoric rise of any new technology, ‘washing’ is sure to follow close behind. That was true with AI where just about every company, platform, and technology attempted to capitalize on the AI craze. At the same time, early adopters quickly realized that working with the initial core genAI building blocks was a bridge too far. Since then, two things have occurred that have lowered the hurdle for genAI adoption. First, existing enterprise applications and services have embedded genAI technology into their existing platforms. This makes adoption relatively seamless for enterprises. Second, public cloud providers have developed more sophisticated tools to make using genAI easier to use than ever.
• Cloud Computing. The major public cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure continue their warpath to develop new and more sophisticated solutions to address the changing enterprise needs. This year marked a shift for the major cloud providers as they increase their focus on enterprise needs. In addition, solutions for private cloud solutions continued to evolve and mature. This creates a wide palette of opportunity for the varying needs of enterprises. Remember that while public cloud is an incredible enabler and powerful solution, it is not the right solution for every workload or application. The reality is that enterprises will need a combination of public and private cloud services. That is in addition to more traditional on premises solutions.
• Cybersecurity. With the advent of genAI, cybersecurity solutions are about to get a lot more sophisticated. CIOs and CISOs have long-since been looking for new and innovative solutions to change the cybersecurity game. GenAI brings new technology that will tip the balance back toward the enterprise. Look at both incumbents and new players to change the game here.
• Network. Network has been plugging along for decades. However, genAI and new innovations in technology bring a wholly new focus to what the network can do for an enterprise. Now is the time to revisit requirements, architecture, and providers.
• Collaboration. The remote work, hybrid work, return to office debate will continue steam along in 2024. At the same time, collaboration tools are becoming more critical than ever. Look for incumbents to offer new and innovative capabilities while new entrants will add a fresh perspective to how we think about collaboration. It is expected that this space could see some shifts in 2024.

Looking Further Afield

To this point, 2024 has a large remit for the CIO and their organization. Beyond what has been discussed to this point, there are several additional areas the CIO will need to keep their eye on as we move through 2024. Each of these will impact core CIO focus areas in 2024. At the same time, several of these require close collaboration with others in the organization.

• Return to Office. As mentioned above, collaboration tools will be key to understand and adjust accordingly. Through 2023, the return to office debate was heating up especially as more companies issued a return to office mandate. 2024 will likely raise the stakes of this debate as companies and employees consider how best to navigate this space. It is complicated and will take some work.
• Silicon Dynamics. The silicon chip space has never been more vibrant, and CIOs need to keep an eye on the changing dynamics. Historically, silicon has been somewhat removed from the conversation for most enterprises. That is changing. Major players like Intel, Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm are just the start. Other players such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google are developing their own silicon products…and enterprises need to take note of both groups of providers. As price/performance and regulatory requirements become increasingly more important, so will the needs of changing and specialized silicon options.
• Geopolitical Rifts. The pandemic showed us first-hand how fragile the supply chain can be. Geopolitical risks are not new, but historically only impacted larger enterprises or those with specific supply chain designs. Today, no enterprise is immune to geopolitical risks. Key here is to understand the intricacies of your supply chain, where the risks are and how to address them accordingly.
• Regulatory/ Compliance. The number of new regulations coming out impacting IT at a global, federal, and state level are unprecedented. With just data and AI alone, regulatory bodies have their hands full and are pressing hard to drive new regulations that govern data. This is a complicated and constantly evolving space that CIOs will need to ensure they stay on top of to avoid enduring undue risk to their organization. It is advisable to collaborate with your internal audit or compliance organizations. The audit committee of your board will also be involved in certain discussions. Keep an eye on what enterprise vendors are doing to help simplify these challenges. Again, technology can offer a lot in this space.
• ESG. The regulations around the different aspects of ESG are growing. CIOs need to be engaged in this discussion as new requirements will come from not just regulatory bodies, but customers as well. Enterprise vendors are working hard to provide details, but the problem is complicated. Taking a wait and see approach is a dangerous path to take.
• Quantum. Quantum computing is incredibly powerful and shows great promise especially in the age of genAI. While Quantum is a combination of computing, physics and mathematics, it is still a ways out for practical applications.
• Specialized Cloud. Over the past decade, there have been fits and starts to specialize cloud computing offerings that center on purpose, industry, geographic or sovereignty requirements. As the general-purpose public cloud matures, more sophisticated options are on the horizon to address these respective challenges for enterprises.
• Robotics. In line with automation comes robotics. Robotics are no longer relegated to warehouses and manufacturing lines. Robotics will make their way into everyday life and that includes enterprises.

The CIO perspective

2024 will provide a, very brief, moment to take inventory of the current state of IT. From leadership to organization to technology, there is a lot of change ahead. CIOs will need to ensure they have the right components to serve their company today and in the coming years. The remit is large and growing. The expectations have never been greater. However, this is still the best time to serve as a CIO and technology is entering a renaissance period.

Vendors, partners, ecosystem players will need to work more closely than ever with customers to understand their changing dynamics and how best to provide the best, differentiated solutions at the best value.

For IT organizations and vendors alike, there is little space for unexceptional players as the demands and rate of increase are accelerating. 2024 is primed to be an exciting year for all of the stakeholders playing in the technology space.