CIO Role in Digital Transformation

Accelerate Digital for Future-Ready Business

Get frameworks for composable technology, empowered customers and the future of work.

Enhanced customer engagement and value are top expected outcomes from digital business investment.

The technology-driven innovations that were transformational in a previous era have become table stakes for staying in business. It’s no longer enough to execute on a digital transformation at the speed of business. You now need digital acceleration — and you need to keep accelerating. Whether your enterprise is a fast follower or a pioneer, you need momentum on your side to make faster progress.

The C-Suite Guide to Digital Acceleration helps CIOs to:

Prioritize what to accelerate and where to invest
Hack your culture to accelerate change
Empower business technologists
Keep up your digital momentum

Contact Information

All fields are required.

First Name Last Name Business Phone Job Title Person Type

Job Level Job Function Job Role

Step 2 of 3

By clicking the "Continue" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Achieve your business priorities

When change is the only constant, we're in it with you for the long haul. From benchmarks to frameworks to rankings, we provide the practical solutions you need to transform your most critical priorities into measurable business results.

Get Started Now

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Gartner helped guide us around our strategic planning, our future planning, enhancing our governance models to ensure we’re firstly client-focused but also outcome-focused and contemporary, moving away from the traditional ICT governance model.

Michael Draheim

Chief Information Officer, Metro South Health

How we address the top CIO challenges

With technology becoming a major enabler for businesses, the role of the CIO is evolving from technology expert to business strategist. With increasing expectations, CIOs today are facing unprecedented challenges to improve business outcomes, transform business models, modernize technology and enhance customer experience. Our insights, advice and tools helps CIOs find solutions to their most pressing challenges and help learn about the latest developments that matter to a CIO the most.

2022 CIO Agenda: Create an Action Plan to Master Business Composability

Discover how business composability drives growth, determine your organization's level of composability and make an action plan to improve your composability score to excel in 2022.

Download the eBook

Build an IT Strategic Plan That You Will Actually Use

Fit organizations — those that perform well in any market condition — distinguish themselves because they are great at creating, articulating, and executing strategies to maximizes results. Use this strategic planning guide to turn strategy into action.

Download Now

CIO Leadership Vision for 2021

2021 brings with it the imperative for CIOs and their organization to generate more business value using innovative technologies and approaches to information. This eBook highlights the trends and challenges that CIOs and Heads of IT will have to reconcile in the coming year and actions they can take in response.

Download the eBook

The IT Roadmap for Digital Business Transformation

The Gartner IT Roadmap for Digital Transformation is based on unbiased research and interactions with thousands of organizations across all industries and sectors. CIOs and IT leaders can avoid common pitfalls and lead smart, effective digital transformation by following best practices.

Download the Roadmap

The Art of the 1-Page Strategy

Developing a strategy has become easier, with 15 pages replacing hundreds, but even 15 pages too many when trying to engage an enterprise in business growth. This complimentary webinar explores the Art of the One-page Strategy, showing you how to use storytelling to articulate business strategy and success.

Watch the Webinar

Want more actionable CIO insights & tools delivered right to your inbox?

Sign up for the bi-weekly CIO digest to receive actionable, objective insights that enable faster, smarter decisions and stronger performance on an your most critical priorities.

Work Email

Person Type

By clicking the "Continue" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Contact Information

All fields are required.

First Name Last Name Business Phone Job Title Person Type

Job Level Job Function Job Role

Step 2 of 3

By clicking the "Continue" button, you are agreeing to the Gartner Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Experience Information Technology conferences

Join your peers for the unveiling of the latest insights at Gartner conferences.

View Conferences

CIO role questions Gartner can help answer

What are the roles and responsibilities of a CIO?

Digital ideation and delivery: Identify, test and scale the most promising digital business ideas within business budget.
Digital foundation building: Manage cross-cutting platforms and integration.
Traditional IT management: Manage legacy infrastructure, security and core enterprise.
General business management: Work with business leaders to shape the organization’s approach to digital business transformation and build the digital dexterity of leaders.

How do CIOs transform into business enterprise leaders?

With the rapid rate of digital transformation changing the face of enterprises globally, the role of the CIO is also transforming. Insular IT management is a thing of the past, with CIOs now a linchpin in the C-suite, educating and guiding business leaders on ownership of critical digital responsibilities to help accelerate digital business progress.

Moving into the future, CIOs will have to cement that critical inclusion in business leadership as management develops more advanced digital dexterity.

Taking a more holistic view of business strategy and transformation instead of just IT, CIOs will need to shift their focus to building the digital competencies of general managers and overseeing implementation and growth of digital strategy.

Why do CIOs need to shift their focus to digital and business transformation?

In 2019, 82% of businesses surveyed had a digital transformation plan in place. Having embraced the importance of technology in the changing face of business, organizations are now developing leaders with their own IT and digital talent to progress with business initiatives, unreliant on IT teams for delivery or implementation. While this is welcomed news for business growth, the traditional role of IT management or CIOs has rapidly changed.

To maintain their hard-fought influence in the C-suite, CIOs will need to redefine their teams and approaches to business integration. All of IT will need to shift focus to educating business partners on emerging technologies, coaching business partners on iterative development methodologies and helping business partners understand integration requirements to remain relevant to an organization’s growth strategy.

As the digital dexterity of the workforce grows, CIOs need to ensure they’re delivering more than just IT advice to an organization.