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The Next Horizon for CIOs: Expereo Studies Organizations' Growth Ambitions and Challenges for the Future

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Leading organizations’ CIOs (Chief Information Officers) have made it clear: Their eyes are on the future, today.

This is, right out of the gate, the long-story-short of a whole batch of thorough findings commissioned by Expereo, a network infrastructure provider that currently works with 30% of Fortune 500 companies. Titled “Enterprise Horizons: How the World’s IT Leaders are Investing for Growth,” the findings review how many U.S. CIOs have made board-backed commitments to increase technology budgets to further drive growth. It also notes the most substantial challenges hindering CIOs’ abilities to make progress on a global scale, yet how post-pandemic optimism remains higher for CIOs than worries over new global uncertainties.

That’s a lot to digest. Admittedly, it’d take a couple of Homeric articles to do Expereo’s full justice. (Though a link to the full, downloadable report is included at the end here.) What I can certainly do, though, is provide a detailed list of the profound points made about CIOs in 2023; i.e. the data pulled from their industries, their hopes and concerns in close measure, and what may be next.

Let’s dive in.

Per Expereo: “The world has moved on yet again – with macroeconomic, geopolitical and environmental challenges in tow – and the pace at which new technologies are advancing is like lightning. The number of digital devices and novel apps we use to stay connected has skyrocketed, and the ways in which we work have shifted. Against this backdrop, the role of CIOs is more important than ever.”

So, to better understand what the CIO community thinks about the latest trends and how they’re navigating through these times, Expereo surveyed more than 650 larger enterprise and mid-market CIOs across the U.S. (as well as in Europe and Asia). Their findings include, courtesy of Expereo CRO Ben Elms:

  • Positivity about future growth prospects is increasing. 64% of businesses retain a positive outlook about the next 12 months. (i.e. up from 52% in 2022)
  • There is a talent challenge in key areas, which could have a knock-on impact on growth. 49% of businesses struggle with finding cybersecurity experts, and 41% with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) experts. Yet despite this struggling (paired with financial market volatility), businesses are beginning to close these expert-retention gaps by upskilling internal teams.
  • Secure connectivity is a common-denominator type of concern for scalable expansion. When entering new markets, procuring reliable connectivity appears to be a main concern for 43% of businesses’ CIOs. Local compliances and talent acquisition are also up there, but there is no business for them in 2023 without dependable network connectivity.
  • Tech budgets are growing across securities, digital clouds and networks. 72% of CIOs’ businesses have committed to (or are leaning towards) sizeable boosts to technology investments. AI and ML, automation and analytics, and IoT (or the Internet of Things) rank near the top, followed by cloud environment stability (which underpins the introduction new digital enablers), then proper support for the networks that connect everything together.

But as stated, hurdles be damned, most businesses (SMEs and global enterprises alike) are optimistic. In terms of growth outlook, businesses with 50-99 employees remain 78% positive, and those with 500+ employees remain 67% positive. Given the difference in business size, these numbers keep solid hope in the equation.

Additionally, Expereo broke down the top investment priorities (i.e. expansion into new markets, increased automation, cost containment, industry innovation, new product development and retaining core talent) and the corresponding sectors. Engineering and construction, manufacturing, finance, communications and IT ranked the highest prioritization-wise across these priorities, whereas education, retail, arts and culture and media and marketing ranked lower. (Healthcare and transportation were roughly even-keeled.)

So, to accelerate these priority innovations and boost long-term productivity, CIOs have found that organizations must look to the cloud. (Connectivity, migrating workloads and assets into the cloud, and AI were pointed to the most frequently.) In order to really maximize cloud investments old and new, organizations require data-driven processes that are reinforced by the right digital solutions to meet present and future needs.

And more needs that workforces face? According to more than 90% of the surveyed CIOs, automation, supply chain issues, ESG, bolstering security threat landscapes, the upgrading of legacy systems and board and management support trump the rest.

Furthermore, given “how everywhere” the internet is in this era, CIOs agree that their ideal enterprise network must be “robust, high-performing, and flexible.” (This goes double when considering the massive spikes in hybrid work.) 41% of CIOs reported that existing workers and new hires specifically expect to work from home. Thus, the effort to support remote workers with high levels of security and performance (as they would experience while working in an office) demands dynamic decisions from CIOs.

There’s certainly more to glean from these findings, but this is where we’ll leave it. (For now.)

And per Expereo CEO Irwin Fouwels:

“There are now many genies out of their bottles, and there’s no going back. New digital technologies are permeating all areas of society and transforming how our businesses operate, communicate and deliver value to customers, putting pressure on CIOs to not only meet the business demands of today, but also to bridge to what the business will need tomorrow – and beyond.”

As promised, the full Expereo report (with more percentages and engaging graphics galore) can be downloaded here.




Edited by Greg Tavarez
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