CIO Management Focus
Staffing is the heart of CIO Management Focus
Last year CIO had a focus on the flood of data they had responsibility for. Now that has changed to resource management and staffing in particular.
Almost all of the current IT graduates for universities in the U.S. have been hired by the major employers like Microsoft and Google. That has put a strain on finding entry level staff.
Areas where staff are in short supply are security and data protection and compliance. With that shortfall CIOs are starting to look at different sources for entry level staffs.
As the economy continues to improve, CIOs are less hampered in 2019 by tightening budgets. And worries about moving to the cloud are less of an issue, since many companies have already made the jump. Executives put more emphasis now on securing their cloud-based assets across multiple cloud environments.
CIO and Senior IT Managers Participated in this Survey
Janco Associates conduct a survey of CIO and senior IT Managers in large and mid-sized corporations. 156 individuals participated in the study. All of them had been operating in that role for over one year and several had been CIOs for well over five years. They all had at least 120 IT professionals who reported to them.
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The top ten areas of management focus that we identified are listed below along with the percentage of participants who listed that as an area of their focus.
- New Security Threats - 87% - identification, remediation and protections. Aside from the use of some AI, this is a people intensive task.
- Data Protection / Compliance - 75% - The EU's GDPR regulation and California's data privacy legislation are driving this.
- Staff Skill Gaps - 73% - Many enterprises have not invested enough into staff development in the past several years. Especially in developing skills associated with new technologies.
- Multi Platform Security - 52% - With the move towards disparate operating environments away for the core data center to multiple cloud platforms security and data protection are more of a priority.
- Innovation / Digital Transformation - 51% - New ways of doing things and the move away from traditional ways of doing everything towards a digital environment are driving top level IT Pros to rethink how they can provide value to the enterprise.
- Revenue Stream Improvement - 43% - IT now is viewed more as an additional source of operational revenue. CIOs are in the process of trying to figure out how to monetize the function.
- Agility of IT - 40% - For most companies, projects with a 3 year development life cycle no long exist. CIO and IT Managers need implement solutions with more efficient and cost effective techniques.
- Outsourcing Risks - 35% - In outsourcing your work, the quality of the deliverable is at the mercy of the firm you outsourced to. Given the sensitive nature of the projects CIO need to utilize strict third-party vendor assessments to evaluate partners.
- Business Results - 34% - IT value is now tied to the results of the operation units. That is a two edged sword. If the operating unit "screws up" the finger can be pointed to IT. Also if IT "screw up" the operating unit will be the first one to point at IT for missed operating results.
- Tools for Digital Workers - 30% - With more remote users who operate on tablets and smartphones remotely instead of an office environment with direct connection to the processing center, productivity tool are more critical.
