CIO Think Tank Roadmap Report: Reinventing IT

In March and April 2021, CIO held a series of CIO Think Tank discussions—virtual roundtables that brought together 36 IT leaders to unpack one of the most important issues in the enterprise today: IT reinvention.

These discussions aimed to identify key issues in reinventing IT to meet today’s rapidly evolving business requirements, and offer a roadmap for IT leadership to overcome practical obstacles. The roundtables were facilitated by John Gallant, Enterprise Consulting Director for IDG, and also included IDC Research Director Joe Pucciarelli, Group VP & IT Executive Advisor, IDC; IDG B2B Editor-in-Chief Eric Knorr; and BMC Software Chief Technical Officer Ram Chakravarti.

[ Download the full CIO Think Tank Roadmap Report: Reinventing IT ]

The participants—IT leaders from a broad swath of commercial industries, universities, and government agencies of all sizes—drew on their own experience and knowledge to describe strategic and tactical approaches to critical challenges. How can IT overcome old habits and technical debt, reskill the workforce, and even reshape its own mandate?

The urgency of those questions has only increased in the wake of the global pandemic. IT not only has to resume business as usual, but also needs to help business accelerate in a new environment.

While pandemic-related challenges have taken different forms in different industries, a majority of organizations around the world have faced significant headwinds over the past year-plus. For example, a global IDC Wave Survey, conducted in September 2020 with 679 respondents, found that 60% experienced supply chain planning and forecasting failures after the initial pandemic shock. 

According to our CIO Think Tank participants, as companies have endeavored to emerge from such pandemic impacts, IT leaders are increasingly tasked with driving growth and profit. It’s “all hands on deck” for organizations to recover and get back into growth mode.

Download our CIO Think Tank Roadmap to learn how a variety organizations are identifying obstacles, highlighting innovative approaches, and challenging the tech industry to help navigate the road ahead.