9 November 2009
CIOs now have a more strategic role to play in driving innovation and raising the return on investments with the help of information technology, Sreeram Visvanathan, IBM Middle East, head of Global Business Services, said.
“Companies are trying to get more into the business values base so the role of the CIOs is changing. In the past they used to be more technology focus really moving into the business value,” Visvanathan told Khaleej Times in an interview on the sidelines of IBM CIO study launch.
IBM met face-to-face with more than 2,500 CIOs, from 78 countries, 19 industries and organisations of all sizes. “In this particular study we also had extensive involvement of about 100 CIOs from across the Middle East and North Africa,” Visvanathan said.
He said that the CIOs interviewed in the region demonstrated that they are on the path to go from IT to business values. According to Visvanathan, key issues they are trying to deal with innovations that how can CIO help company innovate? “We don’t need just technical innovation we are also talking about business innovation. How they do it. How can IT and information help business models? If you take today’s market environment and financial environment one of the key things is the ability to adopt quickly,” he explained.
IBM invests globally in a number of studies such as Chief Executives Officers, Chief Human Resource Officers and Chief Financial Officers and CIO study is part of that studies.
“We do a number of studies every year and these studies basically target the top customers from different parts of the world and all the countries IBM operates,” according to Visvanathan.
He looks after Global Business Services unit of IBM, which is the advisory arm of the IBM.
“Over half of our revenues come from services. Traditionally those revenues came from technology or IT-related services, but for the last 8 years and so we have been very focused on business side of things,” he said.
“Today’s CIOs spend an impressive 55 per cent of their time on activities that spur innovation. These activities include generating buy-in for innovative plans, implementing new technologies and managing non-technology business issues. The remaining 45 per cent is spent on essential, more traditional CIO tasks related to managing the ongoing technology environment. This includes reducing IT costs, mitigating enterprise risks and leveraging automation to lower costs elsewhere in the business,” according to IBM study findings.
The study further reveals, CIOs universally acknowledge that some of their most important objectives too often seem to clash: How can we support the introduction of new services while avoiding the disruption of existing services? How can I reduce costs while improving services? How will I balance the need to influence business strategy with the need to provide top-notch IT support?
