CIOs urged to share chief executive priorities

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The priorities of the chief executive today will become the priorities of their chief information officer (CIOs) over the next six to 12 months, analyst firm, Gartner has said.

With chief executives facing major challenges as businesses struggle with the realities of dealing with the economic downturn, Gartner said CIOs will have a key role to play in cutting costs and restructuring their businesses.

“The tumultuous events of the past 12 months have shocked the world. CEOs [chief executive officers] are confronting reduced revenues and profits and need to accordingly,” said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner fellow. “As a consequence, CIOs should plan for extraordinary requests in 2009 for work and changes.”

The top issue identified was restructuring, where the CIO must be prepared to cancel projects and reduce costs and headcount significantly. Gartner also said unexpected acquisitions and divestitures would increase the importance of risk and supplier management.

As a result, it also warned the CIO to prepare for peaks of public-relations activity in response to press interest in the condition of the company, as well as to perform due diligence on potential acquisitions at short notice.

The CIO will also be called upon to help improve business transparency through reputation management, e-discovery and business intelligence.

Gartner also said it expected a strengthening of “data driven” management culture, as the risks of moving forward with insufficient data become far less acceptable.

At the same time, core IT systems handling risk, currency, supply and logistics will need to be re-evaluated to provide flexibility to cope with changes in the globalisation of businesses and their regulation in different countries and regions, in response to the last few months’ economic meltdown.

It also predicted that governments will become major drivers of expenditure during the downturn and so, CIOs must prepare their organisation’s systems to meet their conditions of supply. And it also said the greening of systems would also continue to have a role to play.

“While Gartner does not expect green to necessarily be ‘top of mind’ in 2009, it will still have a place at the table as long as CEOs believe it is a useful part of reducing the break-even point of the business,” the firm said.

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