‘A CIO should talk about business  transformation rather than technology’   

Business Transformation
One of the things that CIOs need to do is stop talking about technologies; rather they should start talking business. We are not in the business of selling technologies, which is the job of vendors. We are the ones who are in the business of enabling and transforming business. We must first look at what exactly we want our business to be. What it wants to grow into? Which direction it should go? Taking these aspects in mind, we then have to look into all the possible areas where I need to improve. It need not be technology alone but could be business processes also. And the moment you do that, you will start finding the gaps which require some of the technologies to be uplifted and transformed.

Digital – the new Reality
An important aspect I find today is that everybody is talking about going digital. It is difficult to understand what digital is because the meaning of digital is different for everyone. For some creating a mobile app is digital; for some carrying a smartphone is digital; for some process automation is digital and so. But we must decide this word digital and see what digital really means. Probably for you going digital is hiring a cab from Ola or Uber because that has transformed the way transportation was handled or managed a few years back. So, digital is all about enhancing user experience and technology becoming seamless. Another example can be the way we have been experiencing changes using mobile messengers like WhatsApp, WeChat etc. If somebody is looking at automating its process or the cash process, tell me how many companies presently generates invoices out of the computer, or how many companies does that in a manual book? So, digital is here and we must accept it.

Concerns for a CIO
There are many areas of concern which CIOs typically face. The first and the foremost is when a CIO instead of looking at business as a prism starts seeing technology as the same. I repeat myself again that we solve business problems and don’t sell technology. No CEO would be interested in stating “Oh I am really happy I bought Salesforce.com”. Instead they look at how the tool or software he has bought will enable his sales and marketing team or how he can track their revenue, or whatever interactions they are having. He is not talking about technology at all, because for him that doesn’t matter. The other problem that comes around is skilling and skill set availability. Every CIO goes through the pain of having the right skill set; the available skillset is finite. So how should we tackle this? Can I just keep hiring best of the breed because probably everybody is not fortunate with deep pockets; there are few organisations who can hire such talents but not everyone. So, you have to reskill people, retrain them and motivate them by giving them training and opportunities.

Key priorities
The projects which we are working at present, we are trying to make those happen or make them successful and delivering the same to our customers in India. While doing so, we try to ensure that our customers can make use of the latest technologies or can be put to best use.

With now everything getting connected, security particularly the cyber security aspect has become a predominant. In fact, a few years back, the world would had never given a thought about what is cyber security or IT security. But now that has changed. By 2020, we will have about 50 billion devices connected and IoT is going to add another dimension to that. Security is going to be one of the fundamental areas where every CIO, irrespective of the area he is working on has to keep looking for.

Every CIO goes through the pain of having the right skill set; the available skillset is finite. So how should we tackle this? Can I just keep hiring best of the breed because probably everybody is not fortunate with deep pockets; there are few organisations who can hire such talents but not everyone. So, you have to reskill people, retrain them and motivate them by giving them training and opportunities.