CIOs as change agents of outsourcing

CIOs as change agents

It is benefits such as these which could put the CIO in a leading role in the business. The CIO’s visibility across the organisation means they are well positioned to understand the various business processes and interdependencies.

“They can play a key role in the outsourcing relationship, helping to elevate the role of IT to a business enabler and source of competitive advantage,” says Sagoo.

Planning and selection of BPO services and providers is an area where the CIO will need to play a key role, he says: “The CIO’s role will increasingly deal with information rather than technology, fulfilling the original vision of the role. As technology becomes more transparent and cloud architectures reshape and simplify delivery infrastructures, the CIO will need to be more focused on understanding and supporting the needs of the business by ensuring availability, accuracy, consistency, and timeliness of information to users and processes across the business.”

Oshri agrees that CIOs are playing a bigger role. “A sourcing decision is no longer a standalone decision about the IT component, but rather moving towards an integrated sourcing approach in which executives will need to consider how IT can be aligned into business processes and how IT can improve business process performance. The CIO is central to such discussions within the firm and with the firm’s supplier network,” he says.

“CIOs are increasingly becoming the business technology change agents within the enterprise,” says Cognizant’s Roehrig. “The role of the CIO is evolving from the caretaker of the systems of record to the person who unlocks value at the intersection of process and technology. The CIO of the 21st century will be instrumental in helping unlock process-aligned business value.”
IT-enabled BPO is a huge sector – it dwarfs the IT outsourcing sector in terms of spending – but as businesses attempt to take advantage of new technology trends, the IT element of BPO relationships will grow at the expense of people.

Technology trends such as cloud computing and big data are supported by technologies such as social media and smart devices to create new services to complement BPO.

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