The Expanding Role of the CIO in 2020

For the past 10 years, the majority of CIOs have had a transformational focus (currently 42%), however, this year, there is strong momentum in CIOs taking on more strategic responsibilities (40%), according to the 2020 State of the CIO research from IDG's CIO.

As CIOs continue to move towards a strategic role, they are also less likely to be challenged to find the right balance between business innovation and operational excellence (77% vs. 80% in 2019).


Defining CIO Responsibilities

Looking at the activities that CIOs currently spend the majority of their time on, security management (45%), aligning IT initiatives with business goals (44%), improving IT operations/systems performance (42%), implementing new systems and architectures (39%), driving business innovation (34%), and leading change efforts (34%) top the list.

Although the key activities today still appear to be transformational and functional tasks, there has been a declining shift in the percentages since the 2019 study. This year, strategic activities — for example, developing and refining business strategy, developing new go-to-market strategies and technologies, and driving business innovation — expect an increase in 6 to 7 percentage points over the next 3 years, closing the gap between the focus on transformational and strategic activities.

"This is an exciting time for CIOs, as their responsibilities continue to transition to provide value in both business growth and strategic initiatives," said Adam Dennison, SVP/General Manager, IDG Events & Publisher, CIO. "Line of business executives recognize that senior IT leaders are no longer only essential for optimizing IT infrastructure, but also for driving revenue and innovation."

Further supporting this claim, 89% of CIOs say they are more involved in leading digital transformation initiatives compared to their business counterparts. More than half (56%) of line of business (LOB) respondents agree with CIOs on their contribution to this initiative, which is up from 47% just one year ago.

CIOs also shared their CEO's tech priorities for the coming year, which include leading digital business/digital transformation initiatives, upgrading IT and data security to boost corporate resiliency, and strengthening IT and business collaboration skills. LOB counterparts shared their view on this question and showed strong alignment and consistency with IT responses, saying that the CEO's top priorities for IT are: upgrading IT and data security to boost corporate resiliency, identifying new data-driven business opportunities, helping reach a specific goal for corporate revenue growth, and leading digital business/digital transformation initiatives.

Customer-Centric CIO

Within the responsibilities and initiatives of senior IT leaders, there is a common trend around customer experience. The majority (95%) of CIOs believe their role is expanding beyond traditional IT responsibilities, with customer experience (46%) being in the top three areas they are expanding into.

Additional areas include cybersecurity (64%), data privacy/compliance (49%), operations (36%) and business development (36%).

Along the same lines of role expansion, 67% of CIOs say that the creation of new revenue-generating initiatives is among their job responsibilities. In order to complete this task, CIOs are creating business case scenarios with defined costs and benefits, creating teams focused on innovation, and directly interacting with the customer.

When asked which business initiatives will drive the most IT investment in the coming year, improving the customer experience ranked second for both heads of IT and LOB respondents.

Looking at the tech initiatives driving the most IT investment, customer experience technologies (chatbots, mobile apps, etc.) rank third for heads of IT respondents.

To dive deeper into how to drive business forward through digital advancements, business and technology leaders are invited to attend the AGENDA20 conference taking place March 23-25, 2020 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Methodology: The 19th annual survey was fielded online among CIO's audience with the objective of understanding the current parameters of the CIO role and how it may be changing over time. To be considered qualified, respondents must have identified themselves as a head of IT for their company or a division within it. Results are based on 679 qualified IT responses and 250 LOB responses.

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The Expanding Role of the CIO in 2020

For the past 10 years, the majority of CIOs have had a transformational focus (currently 42%), however, this year, there is strong momentum in CIOs taking on more strategic responsibilities (40%), according to the 2020 State of the CIO research from IDG's CIO.

As CIOs continue to move towards a strategic role, they are also less likely to be challenged to find the right balance between business innovation and operational excellence (77% vs. 80% in 2019).


Defining CIO Responsibilities

Looking at the activities that CIOs currently spend the majority of their time on, security management (45%), aligning IT initiatives with business goals (44%), improving IT operations/systems performance (42%), implementing new systems and architectures (39%), driving business innovation (34%), and leading change efforts (34%) top the list.

Although the key activities today still appear to be transformational and functional tasks, there has been a declining shift in the percentages since the 2019 study. This year, strategic activities — for example, developing and refining business strategy, developing new go-to-market strategies and technologies, and driving business innovation — expect an increase in 6 to 7 percentage points over the next 3 years, closing the gap between the focus on transformational and strategic activities.

"This is an exciting time for CIOs, as their responsibilities continue to transition to provide value in both business growth and strategic initiatives," said Adam Dennison, SVP/General Manager, IDG Events & Publisher, CIO. "Line of business executives recognize that senior IT leaders are no longer only essential for optimizing IT infrastructure, but also for driving revenue and innovation."

Further supporting this claim, 89% of CIOs say they are more involved in leading digital transformation initiatives compared to their business counterparts. More than half (56%) of line of business (LOB) respondents agree with CIOs on their contribution to this initiative, which is up from 47% just one year ago.

CIOs also shared their CEO's tech priorities for the coming year, which include leading digital business/digital transformation initiatives, upgrading IT and data security to boost corporate resiliency, and strengthening IT and business collaboration skills. LOB counterparts shared their view on this question and showed strong alignment and consistency with IT responses, saying that the CEO's top priorities for IT are: upgrading IT and data security to boost corporate resiliency, identifying new data-driven business opportunities, helping reach a specific goal for corporate revenue growth, and leading digital business/digital transformation initiatives.

Customer-Centric CIO

Within the responsibilities and initiatives of senior IT leaders, there is a common trend around customer experience. The majority (95%) of CIOs believe their role is expanding beyond traditional IT responsibilities, with customer experience (46%) being in the top three areas they are expanding into.

Additional areas include cybersecurity (64%), data privacy/compliance (49%), operations (36%) and business development (36%).

Along the same lines of role expansion, 67% of CIOs say that the creation of new revenue-generating initiatives is among their job responsibilities. In order to complete this task, CIOs are creating business case scenarios with defined costs and benefits, creating teams focused on innovation, and directly interacting with the customer.

When asked which business initiatives will drive the most IT investment in the coming year, improving the customer experience ranked second for both heads of IT and LOB respondents.

Looking at the tech initiatives driving the most IT investment, customer experience technologies (chatbots, mobile apps, etc.) rank third for heads of IT respondents.

To dive deeper into how to drive business forward through digital advancements, business and technology leaders are invited to attend the AGENDA20 conference taking place March 23-25, 2020 in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Methodology: The 19th annual survey was fielded online among CIO's audience with the objective of understanding the current parameters of the CIO role and how it may be changing over time. To be considered qualified, respondents must have identified themselves as a head of IT for their company or a division within it. Results are based on 679 qualified IT responses and 250 LOB responses.

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Reliability is no longer proven by uptime alone, according to the The SRE Report 2026 from LogicMonitor. In the AI era, it is experienced through speed, consistency, and user trust, and increasingly judged by business impact. As digital services grow more complex and AI systems move into production, traditional monitoring approaches are struggling to keep pace, increasing the need for AI-first observability that spans applications, infrastructure, and the Internet ...

The Hidden Data Engineering Work Required to Make Enterprise AI Viable

If AI is the engine of a modern organization, then data engineering is the road system beneath it. You can build the most powerful engine in the world, but without paved roads, traffic signals, and bridges that can support its weight, it will stall. In many enterprises, the engine is ready. The roads are not ...

Why AI Is the Differentiator for Operationally Resilient Organizations

In the world of digital-first business, there is no tolerance for service outages. Businesses know that outages are the quickest way to lose money and customers. For smaller organizations, unplanned downtime could even force the business to close ... A new study from PagerDuty, The State of AI-First Operations, reveals that companies actively incorporating AI into operations now view operational resilience as a growth driver rather than a cost center. But how are they achieving it? ...

Escaping Pilot Purgatory: How AI Becomes an Operational Advantage

In live financial environments, capital markets software cannot pause for rebuilds. New capabilities are introduced as stacked technology layers to meet evolving demands while systems remain active, data keeps moving, and controls stay intact. AI is no exception, and its opportunities are significant: accelerated decision cycles, compressed manual workflows, and more effective operations across complex environments. The constraint isn't the models themselves, but the architectural environments they enter ...

Closing the Gap in Modern Tech and the Tools Meant to Monitor Them

Like most digital transformation shifts, organizations often prioritize productivity and leave security and observability to keep pace. This usually translates to both the mass implementation of new technology and fragmented monitoring and observability (M&O) tooling. In the era of AI and varied cloud architecture, a disparate observability function can be dangerous. IT teams will lack a complete picture of their IT environment, making it harder to diagnose issues while slowing down mean time to resolve (MTTR). In fact, according to recent data from the SolarWinds State of Monitoring & Observability Report, 77% of IT personnel said the lack of visibility across their on-prem and cloud architecture was an issue ...