Digitisation makes CIOs preferred IT talent

With rising digitisation across organisations, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is increasingly becoming the most sought-after role in the tech community over the last three years, say HR companies.
 
CIOs are responsible for helping organisations formulate strategies to aggregate, store, secure data as also forming monetisation and confidentiality policies on data.
 
“The increasing importance of artificial intelligence, data analytics and cybersecurity within IT has started having an impact on revenues. Although, the IT job market has been stressed lately and the CIO’s role particularly has seen immense growth,” said Ankit Agarwala, Director Michael Page India, an HR firm dealing in top management recruitment.

 

Research firm Gartner reported last week that CIOs are increasingly taking on roles and responsibilities outside traditional IT. Fifty-one per cent of CIOs surveyed in India reporting that they are taking charge of innovation and 49 per cent indicating that they are heading up digital transformation. Average CIO compensation can range anywhere between Rs 1.5 to 1.8 crore in India.
 
The new job of the CIO is to build the required bench strength to scale the enterprise's digital business through support for the digital ecosystem, says Gartner. This means hiring new resources to put in place the right digital team structures.

 
However, 71 per cent of the top performers have a separate digital team to help them scale their digitalisation efforts. CIO role is transitioning from delivery executive to business executive emerging from their traditional back office to help the CEO make decisions.
 
Agarwala further adds that companies are looking for CIOs who are proactive about new opportunities and threats and putting them in increasingly client facing roles. Industry estimates put an increase in CIO compensation over the last couple of years between 25 to 40 per cent depending on the organisation.
 
International recruitment firm Korn Ferry noted that the growth of technology usage in banking and financial services (BFSI) has been a major driver in ramping up the CIO’s role.

 
“While technology firms have always groomed their resources in this area, it is the emerging digital influence on BFSI that is driving up the demand for CIOs in the market lately,” said Navnit Singh, Chairman and regional MD, Korn Ferry International.
 
Further, a scarcity of experienced security professionals has helped to drive up the demand from the financial sector, said Singh. Although sectors like e-commerce are showing rapid growth and are also in need of CIOs, BFSI will continue to drive growth for CIO in coming years.

The Gartner survey found that CIOs are spending more time on the business executive elements of their jobs compared with three years ago. In fact, CIOs from top performing organisations are spending up to four days more on executive leadership.

The more mature an enterprise's digital business is, the more likely the CIO will report to the CEO.
 
“Forty per cent of Indian CIOs surveyed have already deployed or are in short-term planning to deploy AI, compared to 25 per cent of global CIOs," said Andy Roswel-Jones, VP and analyst, Gartner.
 
Highlights

• Increasing adoption of data analytics and AI driving demand for CIOs.
• CIOs are expected to face the clients and help CEOs with business decisions.
• BFSI is witnessing greater demand growth compared to traditional IT.