The shift to hybrid working during the pandemic has highlighted the importance of Chief Information Officers (CIOs), with technology more crucial than ever in enabling operations.
CIOs have always collaborated closely with senior executives and other managers. However, Covid-19 has elevated the role of IT leaders. The rapid shift to remote working in the early days of lockdown accelerated technology adoption by around three years, says Chris White, head of consultancy at IT consultancy QuoStar. It also “highlighted the need to have the right person in the right role, and to bring them into the heart of the business”. This was particularly true of those organisations that had a “CIO in name only, who wasn’t acting as a strategic business leader”.
Veronica Millan, global CIO of marketing communications network MullenLowe Group, which has 90 agencies in 65 markets around the world, agrees. “The pandemic showed everyone that the CIO and their team are one of the most critical in the organisation,” she says. “If they’d made the right decisions pre-pandemic, the business was able to transition smoothly into remote working, but if not they struggled.”