10 top priorities for CIOs in 2024

Last year was certainly a wild ride, with the ascendent rise of AI impacting a wide range of IT sectors and capturing the imagination (and fears) of the world at large. IT leaders can look forward to even more surprises, as well as continuing challenges, over the next 12 months.

To stay on top of both old and new challenges, IT chiefs should evaluate their current business and technology strategies and, when necessary, adjust them to address rapidly evolving technology, business, and economic practices. The following 10 priorities should be at the top of your list.

1. Gain stronger control over data

Jae Evans, global CIO and executive vice president at Oracle, is planning to prioritize data control in 2024, and CIOs across industries would be wise to follow suit.

“As a large enterprise, we have vast amounts of data from disparate sources,” she says. Leveraging technologies, such as generative AI and analytics, promises to make data both more meaningful and more rapidly available in the right context. Doing so requires a robust data management strategy.

“For instance, with our internal customer support requests, we aggregate valuable information,” she notes. Until recently, such information was hard to find and ad hoc at best. “We’re already seeing progress, with support case deflections and request volumes decreasing significantly.”

2. Strike a balance between innovation and operational excellence

In an era of creative disruption, Orla Daly, CIO at business and technical skills training firm Skillsoft, believes that IT leaders in 2024 should concentrate on achieving balance among their myriad initiatives, favoring innovation and “keep the lights on” work in turn.

For her part, Daly is planning to keep pace with, and capitalize on, modest innovation initiatives while maintaining operations and continuing to reduce technical debt. “As we head into the new year, CIOs and other IT leaders will need to understand how innovation can disrupt the business from both an internal and external perspective and make decisions with measured risk taking and a strong focus on priority outcomes.”

3. Double-down on cybersecurity

We are in a cybersecurity pandemic right now, warns Juan Orlandini, CTO for North America at solutions and systems integrator Insight Enterprises. He encourages CIOs to focus on cyber preparedness to ensure they’ve done everything possible to prevent assaults. “Attackers are getting more sophisticated, and all it takes is one mistake for them to get in,” Orlandini notes. “Assume that attacks are inevitable.”

Work toward having the right cybersecurity team in place, Orlandini advises. “This could be an in-house team or trusted advisors who can make sure you’ve done what you can to protect yourself.”

Among the many security discussions IT leaders must have, Orlandini stresses the importance of building a skilled recovery team. “Investing in cyber recovery is often painful because it’s not needed often, but our experience has shown that not having a good set of tools and processes for recovery can be extremely bad.”

4. Build a robust talent development plan

Monica Caldas, CIO and executive vice president with Liberty Mutual Insurance, believes that a strong, skills-focused development plan should be an imperative for IT leaders in 2024.

“Technology is accelerating across every sector, and with that comes shifts in technology professionals’ skills,” she says. “We need to have a rigorous approach to future-proof our IT workforce.”

Caldas believes that’s important to renew and maintain existing workforce competencies as well as to establish a high-performance culture that’s ready to deliver results in today’s fast-paced technology ecosystem. “We’re shifting away from building development plans based on job profiles alone and are now pivoting to build plans on top of a foundation of skills,” she states. “Skill-building will inform how we provide training as well as how team members can grow their careers.”

5. Delve deeper into AI

It almost goes without saying that a top priority in 2024 should be using AI to drive business innovation and efficiency, says Ahmed Fessi, chief transformation and information officer at accounts payable automation firm Medius. “CIOs must be at the forefront of driving digital change, and embrace the advantages of advanced solutions,” he adds. “But while championing AI, CIOs must also ensure safe and responsible use of the technology, especially with publicly accessible solutions like Chat GPT.”

AI is a direct way to skyrocket productivity, Fessi says. He notes that a recent Amazon report found that employers believe AI could boost overall productivity by up to 49%. “As AI solutions evolve, and employee use cases grow, it’s clear that AI will continue to redefine the way we work in 2024,” he says.

As AI continues to redefine work, its benefits are already becoming clear. Fessi notes, for instance, that many administrative burdens are low-hanging fruit for automation. “However, to get this right across their businesses, CIOs should begin by identifying use cases that bring the most value to their organizations, and to start small by running pilot projects, before industrializing the successful ones.”

6. Sharpen your company’s digital acumen

Diane Schwarz, CIO with building products and management services firm Johnson Controls, says she’s focused on increasing digital acumen across the enterprise. “It’s only through digitalization and AI that we will achieve the acceleration we need to deliver critical insights for our customers and our organization,” Schwarz explains.

Generative AI will be a critical component in Johnson’s plan to fully integrate digital into its business core, especially as the company seeks to simplify and standardize operations, she says. “At the same time, we need to be sure employees are using generative AI safely — not putting company or customer information at risk.”

7. Address the AI talent shortage challenge

AI talent is in short supply, as highlighted in a recent McKinsey study. “CIOs must think outside the box and come up with creative solutions for filling these roles,” says Gaudy Jandron, CIO with data infrastructure and IT services firm US Signal.

Besides sourcing talent and upskilling current team members in AI technologies, CIOs in 2024 will need to partner with business leaders to develop programs that will help all employees adapt to the new ways of working, Jandron says. She believes that collaborating with external partners, such as AI vendors and research institutions, will also be critical to access the necessary expertise and resources.

8. Strengthen data governance

By securing organization data and building a clean and current view of relevant internal processes, CIOs in 2024 can help technology teams develop cognitive solutions geared toward transformative process enhancements, says Mike Shanko, CTO at supply chain operating system developer Blue Yonder.

The first step should be establishing strong governance practices across the data landscape, Shanko says. From there, he recommends developing policies and team training while creating a secure, operationally sound environment. “In 2024, viewing priorities from a strategic, long-term business point-of-view, as opposed to viewing solely through a technological lens, will better benefit your overall business and employees.”

9. Seek value creation

Addressing digital transformation initiatives while simultaneously navigating budget constraints is a challenge many IT leaders face. That’s why value creation should be a top goal for IT leaders in 2024, says Jeremy Rafuse, vice president of digital workplace and IT at collaboration and IT management platform provider GoTo.

When it comes to effective IT, less is more, and too many tools can run up costs, accrue technical debt, and lead to disjointed user experiences. Exploring new and innovative technologies is an effective way to add value for customers and remain competitive. “An important part of this is tidying up the IT toolkit,” he notes.

“We’re looking to consolidate our software to remove clunky and redundant capabilities, which in turn will save both time and costs,” Rafuse says. His approach also extends to physical hardware by moving specific workloads to the cloud, reducing both office and data center footprints. “We’re also looking to strategically migrate certain processes to single platforms for ease of use.” Rafuse believes that taking proactive measures to streamline business operations will not only conserve costs over the long run, but also drive up IT’s overall value. “Businesses should always strive for quality over quantity, and cost optimization will follow.”

10. Make cost optimization a priority

Cost optimization is high on the list for most CIOs, observes Ola Chowning, a partner with technology research and advisory firm ISG. “Many organizations are shying away from broad transformation unless it has an underpinning of agility — smaller spend with earlier outcomes — and some extent of self-funding,” she says.

This pragmatic approach expects day-to-day IT costs to remain steady, if not decrease, and that cost basis will remain optimized as businesses continue to digitize and IT capabilities modernize. “This is less about cost take-out, and more about a predictable, rationalized cost basis — an optimized estate,” she says.

As organizations begin emerging from their initial push to the cloud and digital transformation, many have experienced an explosion of cost rather than the rationalized cost base they were expecting, Chowning says. “These hits to the balance sheet and cost position are often driven by the ease with which data and compute capability can proliferate in cloud environments, but also by the financial treatment of IT cost as spend shifts from capital to operating expense.”