The CIO agenda

For most organizations, technology plays a central role in their success or failure. Because of this reality, finding the right CIO to lead the organization through years of digital transformation is critical to long-term vitality and viability.

When IT was primarily focused on back-end systems and streamlining operations, CIOs often were recruited from the ranks of technologists who had managerial experience. Today, where all things digital dominate conversations from the lunchroom to the boardroom, CIOs need a much more expansive set of skills, said Josh Drew, regional VP for Robert Half in Boston. 

"What we're seeing is the traditional CIO is championing the business and the people, understanding current trends, how the technology is going to apply to them, operational budgets and how it ties into managing an entire department," he said. "If you look at a Fortune 100 company, you're talking about significant headcount, budget, and spend, so that's a very business-focused position."

The need for these skills cuts across company size. In the past, CIOs were often found in large corporations with lots of employees and revenue. Today, firms as small as 50 people are searching for CIOs, Drew said. 

In smaller firms, CIOs wear many hats and have to have strong technical skills to ensure that the technology deployed is fit-for-purpose and implemented securely, Drew said.

They also have to work across many departments with different line-of-business managers so they also need the people-skills that can be hard to find in technology-minded individuals.

This is not to say that CIOs at larger organizations are just good project managers, said Craig Stephenson, a senior client partner and managing director of the North America CIO/CTO Practice at the recruiting firm Korn Ferry. To be successful, CIOs should have a background in software engineering, IT architecture, data management, cloud, and information security. 

"If we can find individuals that have all of those, they will be highly sought after from a skill set perspective," he said. If a candidate has "worked their way through a digital transformation at scale, with the scar tissue associated with that, it'll be even better in terms of performance and outcomes the second time around. Those tend to be the types of leaders that are highly sought after."

Larger firms also are looking for CIOs with deep industry-specific experience. At smaller firms or startups, unless they are technology firms, industry-specific knowledge may not be as critical. 

Companies will also want to match a potential CIO's experience to the future technology needs of the organization. 

Not every firm has a mature technology footprint and some will be at different stages of a digital transformation journey. Where one organization may be looking at a massive application modernization effort, another may be looking to move everything to the cloud. Each of these undertakings requires different skills and knowledge.

Finding the right CIO

From posting open positions on job boards to recruiting firms to grooming successors from within the organization, finding the right CIO can take many forms.

Regardless of how organizations find suitable candidates, what still matters most is relevant experience, said Rob Zahn, CIO of AAA of Ohio.

"I've never been big on looking at the degrees and stuff," he said. "It's more the experience and then the chemistry and then what their accomplishments have been in their other companies and the normal things about."

Zahn also looks at red flags including how long they've spent in previous positions and if, during interviews, they have the personal skills to get along with a diverse set of people. If they jump from job to job that could be a sign they are not interested in sticking with the firm long-term. 

This may be less of an issue today as the average CIO tenure has stretched from two and a half years to four, said Stephenson.

Networking is still a very popular option, as well. CIOs know each other as do CEOs and other executives. When one leaves to go to another firm, they often recommend a former colleague for an open position. 

Because CIOs are in high demand, grooming successors from within the organization can be a little harder to do. Opportunities abound so it can be difficult to keep ambitious and skilled people in one place for very long, said Drew. 

"Based on what our clients tell us, they want to retain their talent as long as possible," he said. "That's stability. That's continuity. That is where you can actually build and mold and develop future leaders. I would say that's always the goal." 

"With that being said ... the IT space is so dynamic that I don't think you see a lot of people sitting around and staying in the same seat for long," Dew said.

Salaries are going up

Given the importance of the role, it's no surprise that salaries have climbed dramatically over the years. CIOs at large Fortune 1000 companies can expect to make millions in total compensation, said Stephenson. 

"They're getting three to five phone calls a week," he said. "They're in demand. If they're leaving Company A to join Company B, the total compensation is likely increasing between 25% and 40%."

Top talent can make anywhere from $1 million in total compensation to upwards of $7 million to $8 million, Stephenson said.

Even CIOs at small- to medium-sized firms can expect to make $225,000 or more in total compensation per year. Some of the best paying industries today are biotech, life sciences and financial services, said Drew. The median CIO pay is $215,750, according to Robert Half’s 2020 salary guide. 

Ultimately, finding the right CIO "depends on what the company thinks it needs," said Zahn. "Some could be growing and need someone that's going to help get them into new areas. Some need … a digital change master. But I still think it comes down to experience, chemistry, and what they've accomplished in previous jobs."

Companies often search for the right leadership-ready-yet-technically-savvy successor to the CIO in the final months of an executive's tenure — despite the advantages of succession planning. 

Organizations lean toward selecting outside candidates to fill CIO roles. Four in five organizations selected external CIOs in 2020, according to data from SIM. But tapping a successor internally can ensure preparation and built-in knowledge about business needs without the onboarding outside candidates require. 

"Developing a culture of leadership and developing successors throughout the organization is really important," said Larry Bonfante, founder and CEO of executive coaching and consulting practice CIO Bench Coach. Without that, the organization can't fully be prepared for a leadership-level departure. CIOs and other tech leaders should start thinking about likely successors a year or two in advance. 

When mentoring up-and-coming IT leaders, it falls on the current leadership to help them gain visibility within the organization and connect the successor with business stakeholders, according to Bonfante. 

Bonfante recommends having the successor serve as the CIO's proxy in a board and business meetings leading up their tenure. It helps other stakeholders see the incoming technology executive in a leadership role. 

"The CIOs who are really great leaders and care about their people and care about long-term success and sustainability ... take the time and effort to do this," Bonfante said. 

Mentorship and succession planning eases the burden of transition on the company, while simultaneously investing in the future of IT leadership. 

Lee W. Crump, the former CIO of consumer and commercial services company Rollins, retired in April 2020, after 12 years with the company and over 40 years in IT. Crump not only recommended his successor when he announced the decision to retire, but also spent most of his tenure preparing the next generation of IT leadership at the organization to set the company up for success. 

CIO Dive asked Crump how he prepared successor Thomas Tesh, then VP of IT, to take on the CIO role and for retirement best practices that other CIOs should know.

(This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

CIO DIVE: How do you think having such a close relationship with your successor impacted succession planning and retirement?

LEE W. CRUMP: It made it phenomenally easier. If you can promote from within, the advantages are huge. No. 1, we knew each other. My tenure, the 12 years I was there, was considered a success and he was an integral part of that. So, it was much less traumatic for the company, in other words. When he took over as CIO, he did not feel a pressing need to build a reputation …  to change a bunch of things. 

A lot of times when new folks come in, they almost feel obligated that they have to change a bunch of things and make it "their shop." You will avoid that when you promote from within, and also because we knew each other so well and have worked together so long as a subordinate. I was very comfortable giving him advice and coaching and he was very comfortable coming to me for help and advice if he thought he needed it. 

CIO DIVE: What did the transition process look like? Can you share some examples of processes or projects and how they were passed along?

CRUMP: I was grooming him so that I could retire. He was running all those projects anyway. My role was, I was a liaison. I reported to the vice chairman and CEO, and was a member of the executive steering committee. My role was communication and business relationships, and helping with the strategy, but he was already running close to the projects.

The only thing new he inherited was the major projects that [VP of IT and CISO] Kevin Morrison was running on the infrastructure and engineering side. But because of my management style having both of those guys in meetings with me all the time, Thomas was well aware of what was going on with those. Kevin was doing a great job, so it was just a matter of [him receiving] an additional direct report that he hadn't had before. 

It was not a situation where I had six months and I had to all of a sudden start coaching him on a bunch of things. I've been doing that for the last ten years. I try to do that with everybody that works with me or for me. I've always been a big proponent of growing people as much as I could. ... 

It starts the day you take a new job or you get a new promotion. As soon as you're in management, it really comes down to evaluating your people and growing them to the highest level that they can possibly grow. … Being a good manager means growing people that you may lose, but that's a good thing. If people know that you do that, you become the kind of manager that good people want to work for.

CIO DIVE: Were there any roadblocks in the transition or any issues that you ran into that other CIOs in your position might run into?

CRUMP: No, I can't think of any roadblocks. Certainly, there was a little bit of confusion once we made him the CIO, and I was still there for that six months of transition and overlap. There was a little bit of confusion as to who to go to, but we just agreed in advance that if somebody went around me on something I needed to be involved in, he would let me know and I did exactly the same. 

CIO DIVE: You've been in retirement for a couple months now, were there any projects you had to leave behind in your successor's hands? And do you know how those are going?

CRUMP: Yes — and it's not because he needs me, it's more because I'm just curious and I want to touch base. ... I will periodically text or email him or call him … just to say "Hey, how are things going?" ...

I was providing oversight and reporting on the status, I was doing the weekly status reports, and all of the communication to the executive team and general mailings to the company but Thomas and Kevin were really running everything. I never made any secret of that. ...

Your job is to hire people who if you went away for a month, that nothing would happen, everything would be okay because you had a good team in place. I just went away for more than a month.

CIO DIVE: Any other standout moments from the transition or advice you have for other CIOs?

CRUMP: It's kind of hard to get around patting myself on the back but I think we did it the way it should be done, and I think that I would recommend it to everyone. It's a win for the CIO if you grow your team, so that you can promote from within. You will actually be more successful and last longer at that business.

What it means to be a CIO today has evolved since the role first sprung up four decades ago. 

As the technology changes, so do the technical requirements, but the role has gained a larger business component over the last three to five years as CIOs branch out to become strategic advisors.

While CIOs were originally intended to evolve from the chief operating officer role, motivations and skills behind becoming a CIO vary between executives. For a glimpse into how and why professionals become CIOs, CIO Dive asked eight executives about their journey to the C-suite role

(The comments below have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Michael Voegele, chief digital officer and CIO at Philip Morris International

Technology has been a part of my core for as long as I can remember. As a child, I was constantly exploring and tinkering with things to figure out how they worked — not always with happy results.

By 10th grade, I had realized technology was the path I would follow in my career, and so I transferred to a specialist science and technology school. It never occurred to me that I would become a CIO, though. I was just a person who raised his hand when the opportunity arose in hopes that I could use the position to steer and shape the organization for the better.

I have never considered myself purely a "techie." I am interested in how technology can benefit business and society, which is why I pursued a joint technology and business degree at university. And I will always be more interested in the people who use the technology than in the technology itself.

One of the reasons I began my career at SAP was that they promised to invest heavily in the development of their employees. I do the same as CIO. It's important to me to help people progress in their careers, and I try to empower everyone on my team to have the confidence to speak up and offer contrary opinions. Diversity — of people and ideas — is what keeps an organization fresh. It's how we continue to innovate and advance.

My unofficial motto: WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Nothing has helped my career more than being open, transparent, and straightforward with everyone with whom I work.

Jennifer Solmi, CIO at Hyer

My journey to becoming a CIO has been somewhat traditional, although in the end, I would not characterize myself as a "traditional" CIO.  The reason I say this is, simply put, technology alone does not really interest me all that much.  What really excites me is solving business problems, and if you do this only through the lens of technology, then you may not get the right answers.  I prefer to start with the problem and figure out how to best use technology to find creative solutions.   ....

After my time at Ernst & Young [in their SAP practice], I ventured out on my own. I worked as an independent SAP consultant for several years, focusing in supply chain. During this time, I walked shop floors and implemented SAP in several cities in both the U.S. and Italy. With safety goggles and a hard hat in place, I learned the absolute importance of paying attention to every single detail, being reminded daily by a supply chain guy in one of the chemical plants that, "If I screw up the data conversion of the bill of material quantities, then I would blow the entire plant off the map." Thankfully this didn't happen. 

My last role before becoming CIO and the one that held the answer to my lifelong question — was my 15-year tenure at PepsiCo where I saw the inner workings of a company I truly admired. During my time there, I was responsible for overseeing the sales and go-to-market IT systems for Pepsi North America Beverages — which spanned 35,000 users across US and Canada. It was there I met and worked alongside great people who helped me realize what I wanted to do when I grew up. The answer was that I wanted to work with a unique and amazing team to help start a company, and to solve a looming problem [of labor].  

Rohan Amin, CIO of Consumer & Community Banking at JPMorgan Chase

I've been at the firm for more than six and a half years now. I actually started out in the firm as the global chief information security officer so I was responsible for the bank's cybersecurity globally. Then, two and a half years ago, I got an opportunity to run retail tech. 

It's an example of how the firm promotes internal talent, how the firm thinks about diverse talent and advancing them and supporting them in their careers. I made quite a pivot from running cybersecurity for the bank globally to leading all consumer retail-facing technology. 

Being the global CISO and then coming over to being a CIO has been fantastic. Job one for us as we think about customers is always protecting their information and we know that the trust in the brand that people and the customers have.

Having that background certainly helps me in the new role — along with thinking about how we innovate and bring products to market faster — but always knowing that job one is to keep our customers and their information safe.

Stephen Franchetti, CIO at Samsara

I've always been interested in technology, but originally I saw myself taking the path of a software engineer. There are a lot of parallels between the role of CIO and engineer, which I soon discovered.

Whereas software engineering is developing technology for customers, the role of the CIO is internal systems engineering to support the scaling of a company.

I grew up in Scotland and moved to Silicon Valley on what I thought was going to be a three-month tech consulting job. Twenty years later and I'm still here — which is a testament to how fascinating this sector is. My first large role was at Cisco, where I spent over 12 years. Helping Cisco grow from 15,000 to 70,000 employees taught me a lot about data architecture and building processes and systems for scale.

I wanted to get back to company-building mode, though, which is why I decided to join Workday (at the time 1,000 people) to lead enterprise applications. One of those applications was Slack. It was being adopted internally at a pace I hadn't seen before. So when they reached out asking if I'd be willing to do a coffee chat and share best practices, I said yes. Months later, I joined Slack as their CIO.

These coffee chats are very common within the CIO and head of IT realm. There's a real affinity between peers because companies are all going through the same challenges. A coffee chat is also how I joined Samsara as CIO, where I am now. 

Anthony Macciola, CIO at ABBYY

I attribute most of my success to having a technical background but being externally-focused — which means listening. Turns out listening is an acquired skill. Most people like to talk instead of listening and ask questions. You can gain tremendous insight if you take the time to listen and learn what your customers are doing and what's going on in the market.

As a C-level exec, I spend more than 70% of my time in the field with sales talking to and listening to customers and have the opportunity to participate in 150 to 200 external discussions a year. The engagements allow me to be the true "voice of the customer" or "voice of the market."

I've also come to realize that my critical thinking and analysis skills are pretty good and somewhat uncommon to find in someone in my position. You put all that together and it results in the ability to identify opportunities and trends and articulate vision, strategy, and technology direction. That's afforded me the opportunity to birth over a dozen v1.0 products, and over 50 distinct patents supporting technology direction.

Deb Gildersleeve, CIO at Quickbase

Interestingly, I didn't always know I wanted to work in IT. Growing up, my favorite subjects were science and math, but I wasn't sure what that translated to in terms of a career until I started my first co-op in college in an IT department. From that point on, it was clear my career would be in IT. After receiving my masters in Information Systems from Northeastern, I started my career in consulting and did that for about nine years. Consulting was a great starting point for my career and allowed me to build leadership, IT and business skills across a number of different teams, technologies and organizations.

I then worked in IT leadership at Gartner for nearly 12 years, which really set the foundation for where I'm at now. Looking back, a big thing that set me apart from my peers and helped me get to where I am today is my focus on business skills. Being able to collaborate, think strategically about the business bottom-line and leading with empathy have all really helped me develop my IT leadership style.

A big thing that makes IT leaders successful is when they can integrate and collaborate with the rest of the business to solve problems. IT is often seen as a siloed entity, and they should most definitely have a seat at the table for most strategic decisions.

Carter Busse, CIO at Workato

I've spent years in the IT world doing every job from call center setup to serving as Salesforce's first Salesforce admin. Working at Salesforce as a manager is actually where my ascension to the C-suite started. As the years went on, I started to see my friends in sales and engineering rise through the ranks, receive new titles, and grow their internal visibility, and I started to wonder why I wasn't yet following the same path. I was focused, led a great team, and ran a great operation.

What I realized is that my focus on streamlining our IT operations was too reactive. Instead of moving my career forward, that work was pigeon-holing me as a "fixer" instead of a leader and contributor. That's a common spot to get into, especially in a culture that tells you you'll be rewarded for keeping your head down and being good at your job. I came to see it's about going beyond the traditional functions of IT to provide measurable value for the business — and actively messaging that value internally.

You need to learn every part of the business so you can understand your team's value-add and where you could be filling the white space. It's about developing relationships with business leaders, collaborating on processes, selling your team, and cultivating buy-in and support from all levels of the organization. That's the essential component I was missing early on in my career: moving from "keep the lights on" to "own and message the business value."

Elizabeth Hackenson, Chief Information Officer, Schneider Electric

There are many paths to becoming a CIO. In my case, it started with a focus on technology – and then morphed into broad and wide-reaching business transformations. As I think back on my career, my learnings in the first 20 years were fundamental to becoming a CIO.

I never stayed in the same role for more than 24 months, as I always wanted to learn more and accomplish more. I always volunteered for the project people didn't want to join, because of lack of experience and/or the project didn't have a good reputation. For me, these were the perfect projects to learn more, to challenge myself, and to be part of a team to turn the project around.

Later in my career, I found myself in situations where companies were struggling to navigate the internet bust in the early 2000's. Many companies were in distress and required restructuring. I had been a senior leader of a restructuring project, which when successfully completed, gave me the opportunity to move into the CIO role. From there, I took the challenge of integrating two merging giant telecom providers, with a spend of over $1B in IT. Both experiences taught me the importance of speed over perfection — and how to inspire and motivate teams during incredibly stressful times.

One lesson to share: if you want to become a CIO or move into management positions, you must learn to let go. I built my career on technical knowledge, so letting go of being the expert technologist was difficult. However, I learned the only way to advance was to have the time to be more strategic and to let go of what had helped me become a CIO. I had to learn to trust more and to let people make mistakes — to let them experience failure, just like my leaders had let me — although at the time, I didn't know that.

CIOs are in charge of ensuring their company can stay ahead of the tech curve. Businesses lean on them to anticipate industry changes and mount an appropriate response. But CIOs can also prepare organizations to continue innovating once their tenure ends.

Companies often grapple with turnover in the tech side of the C-suite. CIOs have one of the shortest average tenures among the C-suite, with an average company stay of 4.6 years according to Korn Ferry data. That's considerably shorter tenure than CEOs who remain at a company 6.9 years, and lower than the average C-suite tenure of 4.9 years.

CIOs leave their companies from a myriad of opportunities. Executives can be swayed to lead a bigger company in a similar industry, or poached to lead technology companies in their area of expertise. Or maybe tech chiefs have wrapped up key modernization projects and are on the hunt for the next problem to solve, elsewhere. 

Preparing for succession in tech leadership is critical for continuity in technology strategy, and CIOs can play a role by grooming existing IT talent, providing them with opportunities to lead or own key projects. This helps businesses reap the advantages of having internal candidates in the waiting, who'll be faster to get up to speed.

Complexity lies ahead for organizations without a succession plan in place for the CIO position, according to Lily Mok, research vice president at Gartner, Inc. Disruption is typically higher, and lasts longer, when the successor comes from outside the organization.

New CIOs come to their position most often through the outside of the organization. Eight in 10 CIOs joined the C-suite as an external hire, the Society for Information Management found in its 2021 IT Trends Study. Finding a replacement in the executive market is not an easy task.

"If you go out to the market to hire a CIO, it takes three to six months to fill the position, on average," Mok said. 

Training the next CIO

Talent development needs to become a companywide strategy to bolster existing talent, rather than a disjointed effort taking place solely in IT.

At the College of Westchester, a White Plains, New York-based college, a learn-by-doing approach helps build executive experience, CIO and CISO Kelly Walsh says.

"If your supervisor is going to be out for a period of time, and they have certain periodic tasks or meetings or any kind of things they're expected to do, the subordinate can have the opportunity to step in," said Walsh.

Not all technologists aspire to become CIOs, but there are traits that Walsh looks for in the kind of employee who could one day succeed him.

"One really key thing is communication," Walsh said. "Specifically, being able to translate technical challenges, issues and requirements to business challenges issues and requirements, so that the people you're interfacing with aren't just hearing a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo: They're hearing how a technological solution or challenge directly affects them."

Often organizations will flounder to determine if there's any internal candidates who can sub in for leaders after there's a vacancy, said Walsh. "We're proving whether or not they're ready, by making sure we give people the opportunity to work at the next level."

Translating for the business audience

Mentoring budding IT leaders also means gradually showing them how to connect with business stakeholders.

For Carter Busse, CIO at software company Workato, training a would-be successor starts by ensuring the IT employee handles a project with scope and impact.

"I give them a very visible project," said Busse. At a previous company, Busse supported a direct report by allowing them to own the rewrite of the quote-to-cash process, presenting the demo of the final product to the organization. 

"I give them something big that they can spread their wings open, and fail a little bit if they have to, but I'm there to catch them," Busse said.

Having the perspective of leaders from other parts of the business, from finance to sales or marketing, helps CIOs become an ally in thinking through solutions, Busse said. "If I find someone who wants to be a future IT leader I really try to teach them how business works."

When CIOs resign, companies tend to appoint an interim CIO to keep projects and essential tasks going as the search is underway.

Typically, there's someone within organizations who can play the role of acting CIO when needed, said Sridhar Karimanal, head of the Health and Life Sciences group at Eagle Hill Consulting. But then the next step is usually an external appointment, either of a CIO who comes from another organization or a technologist with Silicon Valley experience.

The option of an internal candidate who can assume the CIO role comes with the advantage of shortening the time to get integrated into the role, said Mok. These leaders also come to the C-suite with relationships they can leverage for faster execution of their priorities.

"All those things can contribute to more efficiency and effectiveness of the new leaders," said Mok.

Before the days of cloud and the ready availability of SaaS, line of business managers relied on IT for most of the software and services they needed to do their jobs. Fast forward 15 years and a lot has changed. 

Most line of business leaders today drive department-level buying decisions, choosing the vendor and the software. At a minimum, they put together the short list of vendors and technology they'd like to work with. 

"In my company, the executive team discusses technology as a whole and not in silos," said Danielle Ruess, CMO of the technology consulting firm Wizeline. "This is critical to ensure we can move faster as an organization, and that we can create as much standardization as possible while protecting our systems and data."

Most leaders still involve IT in the process for sign-off on cybersecurity, data privacy or regulatory issues, though rogue IT is still a major issue. When it comes to enterprise-level purchasing, whether for a new ERP or CRM, IT will have a say — at some point. 

"There are formal processes in place for any sort of spending above a certain point," said Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research. "Ultimately, the head of sales decides what CRM system they're going to use. But should the CIO be part of it? Yes. Are they? I would say in half the deals, the CIO was brought in after the decision was made."

The struggle of large enterprises

In what might seem counterintuitive, it can be hard to institute companywide processes at  larger organizations where cross-departmental standardization of technology is a sought-after goal, said Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College.

"In larger organizations, you have systems built on other systems, there's layers and layers and layers," he said. "You have this … rat's nest of issues and processes leading into other processes. To decouple a process is really, really challenging, because of all the interconnections. How does removing this process impact this process over here?"

The sweet spot is in organizations between 250 and 70,000 employees, Campbell said. Below 250 employees, decision making is more ad-hoc, aided by personal relationships and the ability to talk directly to peers. Beyond a workforce of 70,000, the organization struggles to break down silos due to technical and process debt.

"There is a point above which you don't have one company anymore," Campbell said. "What you have are multiple companies making decisions based on what they need."

A marketing department at a large telecom company could choose different technology, selecting a system separate from a primary CRM. 

Ken Wilson, co-founder and experience chair at consulting firm Bright Horse, said businesses usually follow a three-step process when buying new tech:

• Shortlisting: This is where the buyer finds a handful of vendors on Google, does some additional research, and presents the results to their IT team. 
• Culling: The second step is whittling down a list to one or two finalists based on price and how well the solutions fit their needs. 
• Decision making: The final step is negotiating the price and signing the contract. 

Best IT practices

CIOs trying to reign in rogue IT can follow few best practices.

Know your customer, said Lightman. In large organizations, a CIO must handle many different personality types, roles, expectations, stress levels and other factors that influence an individual's or group's ability to adhere to new rules or adopt new platforms and technologies. 

Companies do these kinds of ethnographic studies on their customers all the time. Lightman's suggestion is to turn these methods inward to understand employees better.

"We have to understand that everybody's under a certain level of stress," he said. "The pandemic has just taken that up to the Nth degree. And when people are under stress, they do things in an irrational manner. So, you might design … a technology rollout that just goes south very quickly because you haven't taken into consideration behavioral economics and people's irrational behavior."

The other best practice is more straightforward: To improve adoption, start slow. Do proofs of concept and pilot projects with groups or departments within the company. Only scale the solution once the kinks are worked out.

IT's role will diminish

As cloud continues to supplant on-premise applications, the traditional role of the IT organization as an arbitrator of technology will diminish, said Campbell.

Outside consultants, systems integrations and technology providers can supplant IT, buoyed by knowledge of integration challenges and the privacy and regulatory implications of their technologies. 

IT will continue to provision new employees with technology, keep local area networks up and running, help decision makers compare vendors' offerings, and be on the lookout for new technologies that could benefit their organizations.

"It's very much an advocate-consulting role," Campbell said. "I see the important role as being the person who's looking at new technologies that might be interesting. As an HR person, you're an HR person, you're not a technologist. You don't necessarily know what you can do with IoT."

When Global Payments was tasked with putting together a multichannel commerce platform at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the tech challenge was clear: The platform would need to be flexible enough to handle payments, personalization and operations for up to 71,000 spectators.

To execute, customer experience (CX) had to guide the system's development, handling transactions while staying adaptable to customer needs.

"We have really sat down, including our technology teams, with the customer to design what they call the fan experience," said Guido Sacchi, SEVP and CIO at Global Payments. "It's not about just requirements in software, it's really the co-creation of the entire fan experience."

A sweeping shift to digital operations means the CIO now touches more critical components of a business, their impact rippling all the way down to CX. With more people adopting digital-first products or services, CIOs can deliver a positive impact on CX. 

Enterprises are increasingly bringing the CIO earlier into projects, a sign of executives adding more CX aspects to their role.

"You really need to be, as a technologist, fully understanding the customer needs and driving the shape of the solution," said Sacchi. "Otherwise, we're missing the boat." 

Building a culture of responsiveness to CX can begin in-house. 

CIOs can provide insight internally into technologies that can improve CX, said Don Scheibenreif, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner. 

Leaders can help support platforms that manage customer data, or enhance customer interactions through robotic process automation, for example.

"The IT group actually has a pretty good handle on business processes," said Scheibenreif. "By helping make a customer-facing process simpler, that has a good chance of coming across as being a low-effort experience, which only contributes to positive feelings towards the company."

Improvements to processes should come directly from the people interacting with a company's website or application. Exposure to what customers go through when interacting with company systems can lead to meaningful change.

Michael Spandau, CIO and SVP for Global IT at Fender, takes an outcome-focused approach to shaping CX. 

The ideal way to influence CX from the CIO seat is "starting off with the CX and working your way backwards," said Spandau. "The first question we ask ourselves is 'what is the impact on the CX?'"

CX, a CIO mandate

The CIO guides their company's technology philosophy and as they advise on technology tools and processes they have an opportunity to directly impact experience. 

In the case of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium project, Global Payments took a modular approach to technology components, which allowed for customization.

Using microservices and APIs, processes are much more modular than 10 or 15 years ago, said Sacchi.

CIO purview over CX is a sign of broader change. The CIO has progressively added more parts of the organization to their purview as operations became digitized.

"Supporting the CX has a direct impact on business outcomes, which is what we've been advising CIOs for years," said Scheibenreif. "When [CIOs are] able to connect what they do to that type of business outcome, then that's when their influence in the organization gets greater."

That shift is only accelerating as more processes become technology-assisted and, by 2025, Gartner expects one in 10 technology leaders will serve as a de facto leader of CX for their organization. 

Companies with a better grasp on the intersection of tech and CX will see improved business outcomes, the firm expects. By 2024, companies with IT teams that understand the needs of customers will outperform the CX metrics of other organizations by 20%, according to Gartner projections.

There's also a link between CX and IT purchasing, which may prove beneficial for technology vendors.

More than two in five CIOs say improving CX is among the most influential business initiatives when it comes to driving IT investments at their companies, according to IDG's State of the CIO report. 

The CIO can also get an early sense of CX by way of internal adoption, according to Ken Englund, Americas technology sector leader at EY. CIOs and chief digital officers can have first-hand experience over product input, he said. 

At the end of the design process, the CIO continues to get avenues into more closely impacting business strategy.

"We see a direct line between really strong design and experience, and revenue growth," said Englund.