10 IT resolutions for 2022

CIOs have a protracted checklist of tech initiatives, product deliveries, and IT tasks deliberate for the yr forward. Each is, after all, vital in its personal proper. Taken all collectively, although, they’re collectively driving some higher good for the enterprise.

With that in thoughts, we requested a number of CIOs to share their overarching aims and objectives — or, within the spirit of the New Yr, to share their resolutions — for 2022.

Right here’s a have a look at what they need to obtain and the way they’re planning to succeed.

1. Maximize folks energy

Booz Allen Hamilton believes its workers is its biggest useful resource, so CIO Brad Stone lists enabling every of them as his No. 1 goal for 2022. The objective, he explains, is “offering the providers and digital atmosphere that all of our customers needs to allow them to maximize who they’re.”

That’s an enormous carry for an organization with 29,000 staff, who — like staff at many different organizations — will proceed in a work-from-anywhere atmosphere.

“We’ve realized lots about what a hybrid atmosphere means, however we nonetheless have lots of unknowns. We don’t all the time know what our customers need, what work means for them, however we nonetheless need to be certain that our persons are supported irrespective of the place they’re or what they’re doing,” Stone says.

He plans to construct employee personas, look for commonalities throughout them, and faucet into the consumer communities to determine wants after which ship choices to satisfy them — however with out creating an amazing sprawl of decisions.

This goal, he provides, “ties to our core enterprise goal, which is attracting, retaining, and increasing our folks.”

2. Be extra empathetic

Abha Dogra, senior vice chairman of digital expertise and North America CIO for Schneider Electrical, traveled to Mexico in early December to go to staff she hadn’t but met in individual. She considers the journey an early begin on her 2022 objective of utilizing extra of her emotional quotient, or EQ.

“As tech leaders, we could be IQ-oriented; my conduct is pushed by the IQ facet of my mind. I don’t imagine that may change, however I’d like to offer myself a objective to actually up my EQ facet, the place I ought to now be rather more current to my crew, bodily, emotionally, to actually assist them evolve,” she says.

She traveled to Monterrey particularly to go to a crew working within the firm’s digital hub, which opened simply months earlier than the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Dogra says she made it some extent to maintain open time on her calendar and sit in open areas, such because the workplace kitchen, so she might have interaction with staffers on a private stage and let staff know she’s obtainable to information, mentor, and train as a lot as to steer.

3. Drive buyer expertise to the subsequent stage

RJ Juliano, chief info and advertising officer for Parkway, a Philadelphia-based firm that has been shopping for, promoting, managing, and leasing actual property and parking amenities, has massive concepts on learn how to construct a customer-centric future for this practically century-old firm.

Juliano says he envisions constructing a frictionless buyer expertise that delivers extremely correct info and instructions to the place they need to go — and that connects them with the opposite locations they should be on their journeys.

“We’re a part of an enormous chain and we need to be a frictionless piece of that,” he says, explaining that his imaginative and prescient requires working with different companies to attach platforms to supply the providers clients want.

Parkway

Juliano’s concept isn’t new, but it surely was sidelined for a time in the course of the pandemic as different wants took precedence. However Juliano is making buyer expertise a central a part of his 2022 plans, constructing on capabilities, reminiscent of new apps for touchless providers, that had been delivered in the course of the pandemic.

He says he doesn’t have time to waste: “I believe buyer expectations will double at a excessive tempo now; they anticipate a totally linked world.”

Others see that, too: The 2022 Tech Trends report from Info-Tech Research Group discovered that 69% of surveyed IT practitioners imagine altering buyer expectations will disrupt enterprise within the subsequent 12 months.

4. Retain newfound agility

Organizations that made it by 2020 and 2021 did so, in lots of circumstances, as a result of they had been in a position to adapt and alter by practically two years of tumult and disruption.

“All of us found out learn how to be nimble by power. We don’t need to now lose that momentum. I don’t need to see folks return to being overly risk-adverse,” Juliano says.

He believes organizations, together with his personal, might backslide into previous processes that required extra steps to approve and make adjustments. Though he acknowledges the significance of processes and controls to make sure good choices are made, he needs to see them nimble sufficient to maintain the identical pace they enabled in the course of the pandemic.

“Let’s not neglect the lesson we realized: We are able to transfer quick. We found out learn how to suppose and flex actually rapidly. Let’s preserve doing it,” he says.

5. Prepare for development

IT drove lots of the expansion that enterprise noticed in the course of the previous yr.

Benefix.us

Anticipate that to proceed, in line with the (*10*), which lists “driving firm development” at No. 7 on its survey of high 12 CIO priorities for 2022.

“Armed with loads of newfound experiences and reshaped perspective, 2022 would be the yr for IT to take all that has been realized, set new baselines, and drive towards new ranges of development,” the report states.

Steve Heilenman, CIO of Benefix.us, a startup within the insurance coverage tech area, has driving development on the high of his checklist of resolutions for the upcoming yr. The 5-year-old firm has seen 121% year-over-year development in its brief historical past, and Heilenman says IT is important to enabling the corporate to proceed on that path of speedy development.

Heilenman says Benefix.us IT is working to stabilize the corporate’s platform to accommodate that development whereas additionally including new options, such because the analytics capabilities that clients need and the automation inner groups must preserve tempo with the growing workloads that include development.

6. Flex data-driven capabilities

One of many high objectives Eric Johnson, govt vice chairman and CIO of Momentive (previously SurveyMonkey), has for himself and his group: driving extra enterprise influence by the corporate’s knowledge program.

Johnson spent the previous yr constructing the groundwork to actually seize on that chance. “We targeted investments in knowledge infrastructure, hiring key expertise and key wins,” he says. “In 2022 we’ll now push to outline bigger objectives and tasks to maneuver the needle on important enterprise KPIs utilizing knowledge science and [machine learning].”

Administration consulting agency McKinsey & Co. places data as one of six “make-or-break priorities” for CIOs for 2022.

Momentive

“It’s not a lot of an exaggeration to say that no vital value-creating initiatives for the enterprise are doable with out good knowledge. It’s actually the lifeblood of the enterprise and ought to be handled that approach,” McKinsey senior accomplice Aamer Baig writes on the subject, including that CIOs should concentrate on high quality over amount and develop “an orchestration functionality to make the numerous knowledge linkages wanted to allow superior experiences.”

Booz Allen’s Stone additionally had an analogous decision involving knowledge, extra particularly to proceed pushing the corporate on its path to being a very data-driven group.

“We need to get extra worth out of the information and to make use of it extra to tell our choices so we will actually obtain higher pace of decision-making,” he provides.

7. Optimize the hybrid work tradition

For a lot of CIOs, the hybrid work atmosphere — that blend of in-person and distant staff — is right here to remain for each their very own IT staffers and for their group’s total workforce. Thus they’re tasked with each delivering the underlying capabilities and main and managing the brand new office tradition.

However even after practically two years working on this mode, challenges stay. The Snow Software program IT Priorities Report discovered that 78% of IT leaders stated hybrid work might be a burden as they attempt to rent, keep, and adequately handle their group’s rising distant workforce.

Laserfiche

It’s not shocking, then, that CIOs are resolved to concentrate on constructing a office tradition tailor-made to the hybrid mannequin.

Thomas Phelps, senior vice chairman of company technique and CIO for Laserfiche, is one such IT chief.

“With Laserfiche transitioning to a hybrid work atmosphere, we have now a chance to rent expertise to work from nearly wherever and in all places. The problem is how do you maintain an organization tradition when your human interactions could also be restricted to a two-inch Zoom thumbnail,” he says.

He provides: “My decision is to not simply lead expertise innovation and enterprise efficiency, but additionally discover new methods to maintain our firm tradition for hybrid work with management that units the tone and the correct mix of digital — and typically analog — providers and collaboration instruments. Some expertise options will affect what our hybrid work tradition seems like, however the greatest influence will come from fostering a tradition the place groups really feel engaged and valued.”

8. Automate, automate, automate

Automation tops the checklist for Stephen Franchetti, CIO of tech firm Samsara, who needs to make use of the expertise to each drive productiveness and simplify the consumer expertise.

Samara

“We wish the folks we rent to be targeted on the job we rent them for. We wish our gross sales people to be on the market promoting and our engineers to be reducing code and creating nice merchandise, versus engaged on administrivia,” he says. “So, automating these repeatable processes by apps, bots, and integrations will probably be important for us to stay agile as we develop.”

Furthermore, he believes automation is a important part for future success, seeing it as a technique to assist his firm “evolve, scale successfully, and preserve our agile edge within the course of.”

Others share his perspective. The Data-Tech 2022 Tech Traits report discovered that 79% of surveyed IT leaders see automation offering excessive worth to their group within the yr forward. The report additionally listed automation as a service as certainly one of its 5 tech tendencies to look at in 2022.

9. Innovate

In keeping with the Snow Software program report, CIOs put “driving innovation for aggressive benefit” as No. 5 on their checklist of 12 high priorities for 2022 — up from the prior yr’s No. 9 spot.

Ravi Naik, CIO and govt vice chairman of storage providers for Seagate Expertise, charges innovation even greater on his checklist of 2022 resolutions. In actual fact, he lists innovation — and extra particularly, the flexibility to innovate throughout the constraints he has — as his high decision.

Seagate

“It’s about scaling all we’re doing extra effectively and cleanly in an effort to reinvest sources into the group,” he says, noting that it’s important for development that IT groups query the established order. “When innovation is unleashed, we will unlock the worth that’s caught in inefficiencies and permit that worth to be reinvested into the corporate. In fact, CIOs can’t try this by themselves. It’s a conduct that must be institutionalized. I encourage the complete IT group to tackle that mindset.”

He provides: “We are able to do extra with much less not as a result of we’re merely ravenous tasks or shutting off the lights, however as a result of we have now discovered a greater consumption mannequin because of cloud and agility. We have to direct sources the place they’re wanted most. That’s the reason I need to drive a tradition that innovates beneath constraints.”

10. Simplify

The Data-Tech Analysis Group in its 2022 Tech Traits report identifies complexity as a threat issue for CIOs as they drive ahead with sure initiatives. Booz Allen’s Stone agrees, which is why he places “simplify” as one other certainly one of his resolutions for the yr forward.

“I need to simplify our enterprise and simplify our operations,” he says.

He sees using extra cloud expertise as one of many main methods he’ll drive out complexity, and he believes ridding the group of bespoke processes and extremely tailor-made functions as one other transfer to make, explaining that each of these can create friction and gradual the group at a time when seamless providers and pace are wanted to succeed.