Novel report from the IBM Institute for Business Value argues that CIOs need to understand that the technology landscape has fundamentally changed in recent years – and that the up-to-date era of artificial intelligence requires mastering up-to-date skills and core competencies.
“IT as a standalone function is dead,” write IBM researchers. “Technology is business.”
In the up-to-date era of generative AI – a rapidly evolving landscape of ubiquitous digital tools – healthcare technology leaders must remain agile, adaptive, assertive and proactively communicate with their CEOs and CFOs to aid their organizations gain competitive advantage.
The report – which surveyed more than 2,500 CIOs, CTOs and CTOs from across industries worldwide – identified half a dozen potential blind spots that today’s IT leaders need to address in the era of AI.
For example, IBM research has shown that CEOs put “product and service innovation” first over the next few years. But only 43% of IT leaders surveyed said their organizations are effective at delivering differentiated products and services, and 53% said their own executives consider technology “no more than moderately important to product and service innovation,” according to the report. “This disconnect between technology and business suggests that a sea change is needed.”
Here are some other statistics:
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While nearly 75% of CEOs are enthusiastic about up-to-date technologies and their ability to drive innovation, 43% of CIOs and CIOs report that their own concerns about technology infrastructure have increased over the past six months due to generation AI.
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Meanwhile, nearly 67% of CFOs say their leadership has the data they need to leverage up-to-date technologies. But IT leaders have a different view. “Only 29% of technology leaders strongly agree that their enterprise data meets the quality, availability, and security standards that support effective scaling of generative AI.”
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More than half (58%) of IT leaders say they struggle to find the right talent to fill key positions.
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Less than 50% of these same executives say they are adequately implementing responsible AI practices, such as explainability, transparency and fairness
“Despite the evolution and emergence of enterprise technology roles, ‘technology’ has not always been considered in the strategic business decision-making process,” IBM researchers said in the report.
“The lack of or ineffective participation by technology leaders has created blind spots within organizations, making it difficult for organizations to leverage today’s AI capabilities in all their forms – traditional AI, AI generation, machine learning and automation,” the IBM researchers found.
BIGGER TREND
has long chronicled the evolution of the CIO position over the past decade.
Back in 2014, we noticed that the former “IT guy” had now become “a skilled strategist at the executive table, with more demands than ever before.”
And this was before cloud-based AI and automation permeated and transformed every corner of the healthcare system.
Since then, other profiles have shown how the mission and mandate of healthcare CIOs is “rapidly shifting toward innovation, transformation, and revenue generation.”
IN THE DOCUMENT
“Tech CxOs must boldly expose the six blind spots that prevent their organizations from achieving AI advantage,” said IBM researchers. “To overcome the barriers, CXOs must lead truthful, necessary discussions about their organizations’ readiness to deliver breakthrough innovation and business outcomes.