Highlights –

  • A recent survey by Navisite found that there have been significant changes in the evolution of the CIO role, budgets, priorities, and compensation, because of the pandemic.
  • Thirty-three per cent of CIOs said they now spend 21% of their IT budget on digital transformation efforts, compared to 26% before the pandemic.

Navisite, the digital transformation provider, published a new report saying that 51% of CIOs say their job has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes include taking on new responsibilities, including new titles, and being named to the company board.

Business operations changed almost overnight when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Even after two years, many companies are still dealing with impacts like supply chain disruptions and overall operations changes. Undoubtedly, all this is happening with CIOs at the center of it all. But how exactly has their role changed?

The recent survey by Navisite found that there have been significant changes in the evolution of the CIO role, budgets, priorities, and compensation. Fifty-one per cent of the CIO respondents confirmed that they had seen changes and expansions in their job roles over these past two years. This includes the emergence of new titles like the president, CTO, and COO and being named to company boards.

Twenty-one per cent of them directly report to the CEO. This is as CIOs continue to take additional leadership roles to help organizations navigate the changes that happened due to the pandemic. Resultantly, 83% of the participating CIOs confirmed taking on new responsibilities beyond traditional IT to support other departments in the company, with business operations (39%) and cybersecurity (33%) leading the way.

The survey also found significant repercussions on IT budgets, with 52% of CIOs reporting an increase in their IT budget since the pandemic started. There has been an increase in digital transformation efforts in almost all companies, with 33% of CIOs saying they now spend 21% or more of their IT budget on digital transformation efforts, compared to 26% of respondents before the pandemic.

It looks like the trend is staying for the long run, as 88% of them confirmed that they plan on spending more of their IT budget on such efforts in the next 3-5 years.

Wondering which projects top their priority list in the coming future? CIOs mentioned that the critical projects for the next 12-18 months are cloud-first strategy (37%) and cybersecurity (43%).

Navisite conducted this survey among over 200 CIOs from different industries to learn about the changes in their roles as CIOs and their priorities, compensations, and budgets since the pandemic started. The focus was to note the effects of digital transformation and the implementation of new processes to accommodate remote workforces and new operational processes. 90% of the participants worked as a CIO or in a similar executive IT-level role before March 2020.