Over the following year, we’re going to determine CIOs step into the limelight, or step into oblivion. The decision is theirs! With cloud computing, mobile technologies and large data creating a significant impact on business practices and revenues, the CIO’s technical expertise is increasingly called upon within the boardroom and around the business as functional heads look to embrace data, content and analytics in ways previously only dreamt of.
The IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing survey last year showed that spending on cloud now accounts for a 3rd of IT budgets, and it is expected to grow by one other 16% this year. Why is that this? It’s partly as a result of business functions, akin to marketing, embracing the cloud for innovative capabilities. It also includes resulting from IT departments showing leadership around the business and taking the chance to jump forward with fantastic innovations, in preference to having to take one small step at a time. Cloud computing enables companies to be bigger and higher as they’re not confined to the four walls of the office – locked behind legacy systems and firewalls. Having the ability to make money working from home, at the go or abroad securely, the cloud offers businesses the chance to be more flexible whilst cutting costs.
The need for speed, and innovation, is driving the move to the cloud. Here is placing enormous stress at the shoulders of IT workers. They’re torn between the necessity to drive security, process and efficiency while catering for the demand of innovation and responsiveness to the business. With the cloud commencing to dominate the business and IT landscape, IT workers ought to align with the business or face the danger of being side-lined. Technology choice – and the associated budgets when it comes to IT maintenance, support and updates – at the moment are placed firmly within the hands of the business user, removing the vast majority of what the IT department’s time and budget was previously spent on.
Alignment with the business is now delivering a brand new opportunity for IT workers worldwide to carve out new roles for themselves using Business Intelligence and analytics to drive change – and revenues – within their business. Tools from companies like Cloudera, Oracle, Salesforce.com or IBM at the moment are enabling businesses to recover insight into their customers, what they prefer and what they find useful. This offers a platform to create important predictions for the business; minimising risk and identifying new revenue opportunities.
Savvy IT workers are utilising these analytics to create their very own tools. Some organisations have already seen new revenue streams created by these products which have come directly out of the IT department.
What we’re seeing is a brand new breed of CIO and IT workers; combining analytics with other technologies to create new capabilities. For instance, combining analytics with mobility for the sector and sales operations or mixing analytics with social media to reinforce customer engagement.
A good example of it truly is Gambling firm Betfair’s mobile app. It successfully increased sales via mobile applications by 88 percent across its 2011 financial year. It’s now recognised as an essential channel for the business.
This form of success have been replicated across many industries. Netflix used business analytics to create a recommendation service to its customers, making it easier for them to locate films or TV shows they were prone to watch. Business analytics forms a vital part of the roll-out of BC Hydro’s smart meters. And, P&G created its Business Sphere, which delivers business analytics to staff in real time, speeding up the call-making process.
Analytics and business intelligence are actually considered to be the highest technology priority for CIOs and CFOs, in accordance with recent report from Gartner. By mastering these tools and the opportunities they create, IT workers can gain a brand new set of key skills to aid them move up throughout the organisation. It’s a rapidly expanding job market; recent research by E-Skills and SAS has found that jobs for giant data staff has increased by 43 per cent during the last year, with a specific emphasis on technical skills. IT workers quick to capitalise in this will see new doors opening their career, giving them the brink for that CIO role when it comes up!