CIOs take on the changing technology landscape

As the $100-bn IT industry is grappling with the changes, the CIO is also being forced to look into the changing eco-system to adopt new technologies

With close to 80% of incremental enterprise investment expected to be in the digital technologies, the role of the chief information officer is undergoing a huge shift.

As the $100-billion IT industry is grappling with the changes, the CIO is also being forced to look into the changing eco-system to adopt new technologies.

Rudi Peeters, CIO, KBC Group, that has been transforming the IT landscape at the company believes it is better to disrupt yourself and manage the disruption rather than wait for external disruptions to change the company. "We have shifted from siloed multi year planning to cross domain continuous planning. we plan every three months now as against every year earlier," he said.

Retail industry is one of the industries, which has been at the forefront of this changing technology shift.

"The change in retail in the past two years is more than that over the 15 years preceding that. When Millenials go shopping they will just buy whenever wherever whatever they want. Retailers need to adapt to that. Mobile internet has made a huge impact on retail sector..mobile completely changed shopping behavior of customers. By 2020, retail will be predominantly bricks and mortar business and retailers that adopt technology will survive while others will be doomed. I cannot see China going through a big hypermarket space like US did..They have already leapfrogged to Alibaba.com and other online retailers," said Mike McNamara, Group CIO, Tesco Group.

Dr Michael Gorriz, CIO, Daimler said that earlier IT was reactive to business needs. Quality, time and budget were key focus areas earlier. "The modern digital way focusses on setting strategic goals, delivering customer satisfaction and value creation. The discipline in an agile environment is higher than that in traditional software development," he added.