Asian business leaders need to embrace role of IT more strategically: CIO Study

NEW DELHI: According to a global report by CA Technologies' on 'The Future Role of the CIO- Digital Literacy', 81% of the Asia Pacific CIOs ( interviewed) believe a lack of digital literacy amongst senior executives could be hampering business growth. Only 20% of Asian CIOs in the study felt that their management fully understands the capabilities and impact of new and emerging technologies.

A total of nine Asian markets were involved in the global survey, including Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

The study showed that while business leaders may lack digital literacy, they largely do understand the role of technology in their organizations, where about 75 % of Asian CIOs in the study felt their management team consider IT to be strategically important.

" Asian business leaders today have largely accepted that IT has a role to play in enhancing the competitiveness of businesses. For IT to be truly transformational to businesses, leaders need to elevate the role of CIOs to be more strategic than operational," said Lionel Lim, president, Asia Pacific & Japan, CA Technologies.

CIOs fear senior-level digital illiteracy is causing a lack of market responsiveness, missed business and investment opportunities, poor competitiveness and slower time to market. Further, almost one fifth (19%) of the CIOs interviewed believe the C-suite does not understand the impact of new and emerging technologies.

The report highlights that almost a quarter of CIOs believe senior executives see IT as a cost of doing business, rather than as a means to grow the organisation, make processes more efficient and introduce greater agility and competitiveness.

As a result, it is not surprising that only 17% of CIOs are always involved in the strategic decision making process, impeding the digital strategic thinking of the senior leadership team.

Professor Joe Peppard, director of the Information Systems Research Centre at Cranfield School of Management, believes senior managers must acknowledge that the value from IT comes not from technology, but from the ability to manage and exploit information. "A lot of organisations just wouldn't be able to survive for very long without their IT systems,"" says Mr Peppard.

"CIOs are transitioning into the role of brokers of IT services; they will also be orchestrators of decisions concerning the architecture of the enterprise, innovation with IT, compliance and policies, and will have closer involvement with line of business managers in realising value from their digital strategies." He adds.