CIO mandate: Make 2023 the year of automation
Brant Carson
Senior Partner, Vancouver
In 2023, we are going to see a further evolution in the demands on the CIO to do multiple things well at once. That includes understanding the business, creating value, increasing productivity, innovating, maintaining high levels of security, and managing a large organization. The pressure will especially be on CIOs to reduce costs while creating leaner, faster, and better IT. That might seem like a tall order, but it presents an opportunity for CIOs to recapture some of the high ground they occupied during the pandemic, when technology was at the center of many companies’ responses to the disruption.
In some cases, making these gains will be straightforward. The past few years of plenty, for example, have led to runaway costs that are relatively easy to cut back. Migrations to cloud without sufficient attention to managing costs is just one typical example. But the opportunity and the primary focus for the CIO should be in automating away waste.
One fast-growing tech leader made that a virtual mantra by writing code to drastically reduce both manual labor and process steps. That includes automating compliance (ensuring code meets regulatory guidelines before being submitted), testing (ensuring code won’t bring down the system), and standing up infrastructure (enabling engineers to access safe development environments on their own). Good automation both reduces costs and drastically improves the efficiency and speed of development while lowering risk. These are core characteristics of top-performing companies in the digital age, so investing in automation during a downturn can put a business in the position to accelerate once the economic environment improves.
The final piece of the automation puzzle for CIOs is how to communicate the gains from automation in terms of business cases. Companies will have a very high bar in 2023, so CIOs will need to be crystal clear on ROI for automation cases, incorporate them into all review processes, and ensure that the promised value is realized.