CIOs play a critical role in shaping the enterprise of the future and will need to lead the transformation of their IT applications, services, and infrastructures to drive the change.

Executive summary of the CIO implications of the IBM Global CEO Study white paper

IBM Corporation

The Enterprise of the Future

Results from the IBM Global CEO Study are in, and they have major implications for CIOs. The 1,130 CEOs interviewed in the study envision an Enterprise of the Future that is all about change. This change goes beyond the types of changes experienced over the last 20 years: It’s faster, pervasive and ongoing. In fact, the only constant in this scenario of the future is the pressure on CIOs to do more, faster, better—with less.

Moreover, companies that were identified as outperformers, based on comparisons of publicly available revenue and profit track records, are anticipating even more change than other study participants and report that they are better at managing it.

Today’s CEOs are looking to instill five key traits within their organizations that will prepare them to become Enterprises of the Future:

• Hungry for change—embracing the fast, broad, uncertain changes that lie ahead
• Innovative beyond customer imagination—leveraging growing customer demands as an opportunity for differentiation
• Globally integrated—becoming outperformers by embracing global integration
• Disruptive by nature—innovating business models to stay ahead of the competition
• Genuine, not just generous—viewing corporate social responsibility as an opportunity for differentiation

CIOs as catalysts for change

Among the many roles CIOs will play in this CEO agenda, two stand out.

As providers of IT services to the enter­prise, CIOs must transform their IT applications, services and infrastructures into nimble, automated environments that can support the Enterprise of the Future—and do it as quickly as pos­sible. The fact is that, for many, the Enterprise of the Future will be difficult to support with existing IT environ­ments, which typically include silos of data, applications and hardware that can slow change.

CIOs must break down inhibitors to change while managing the associated risks. Just as the automobile assembly line had to evolve to support the glob­ally integrated automobile companies of the 21st century, IT must continue to evolve as it becomes increasingly critical to the Enterprise of the Future. CIOs will need to enhance service management in order to provide the consistent, reli­able and innovative service delivery that will be so essential to the Enterprise of the Future.

As leaders of IT, CIOs have the opportunity to transform their IT organizations into models for the rest of the enterprise and to become full partners to the business in the delivery of the Enterprise of the Future. IT is typically a major function within the enterprise—with significant and vis­ible expense and capital budgets—so it faces many of the same challenges as the enterprise as a whole.

IT is also the provider of the tech­nology-based solutions and services that enable the CEO vision. In fact, CEOs see technology as one of the top three external factors affecting their organizations. Information will be the key to managing the change and innovation that define the Enterprise of the Future. That means IT organizations must evolve beyond managing data to creating business intelligence. As an expert on the “art of the possible,” the CIO can be a key ally of the CEO in moving toward a shared vision of the Enterprise of the Future.

Thriving in a permanent state of change

Although a recent study shows that 51 percent of CIOs already see themselves as transformation leaders, CIOs are being challenged as never before with increased expectations for deliver­ing solutions that support the CEO’s accelerated change agenda.¹

CIOs and their IT organizations, like their CEOs, must instill five core traits:

• Hungry for change—transforming IT applications, services and infra­structures to make them flexible, extensible and secure
• Innovative beyond customer imagination—enabling collaboration across and beyond the enterprise and turning data into insight
• Globally integrated—moving toward a shared services model and enabling integrated business operations and supply chains
• Disruptive by nature—preparing to support the evolving business models of the enterprise, including acquisi­tions, mergers and divestitures
• Genuine, not just generous—work­ing to reduce the IT footprint and associated energy use, along with the human effort required to sup­port the IT infrastructure

The good news is that the vision, tech­nologies, methodologies and services are available to support CIOs as they prepare to thrive in the Enterprise of the Future.

For more information

For further details about the IBM Global CEO Study, please visit:

ibm.com/enterpriseofthefuture

For additional business insights from IBM, please visit the IBM Institute for Business Value:

ibm.com/iibv

¹State of the CIO 2008, CXO Media Inc., 2007.

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