Under pressure: Has there ever been a harder time for CTOs and CIOs?

To understand the issues in today’s technology market Crosstide surveyed 500 UK enterprise CTOs and CIOs in the BFSI, retail, and healthcare/life-sciences sectors. The research launched at an exclusive event with clients, partners and a thought-provoking fireside chat with Greg Williams, Editor-in-Chief of WIRED UK and Deputy Global Editorial Director of WIRED.

The findings are fascinating. The conflict of first-wave transformation was human; a nervous response to changing years of tried and tested processes. Second-wave transformation faces a more formidable foe; macroeconomic and sociopolitical uncertainty.

Navigating this complexity has implications for the full transformation value chain, but one audience above all else finds themselves squarely in the middle of competing priorities, unproven technologies, financial sensitivity and the pressure to compete.

It has never been harder to be an enterprise Chief Technology or Information Officer.

The challenges facing enterprise technology leaders

This proprietary research reveals the pressure cooker that today’s CTOs and CIOs are operating within. The data shows the tension between rising expectations and falling budgets, the duality of demand for increased revenue and operational efficiency, and the fervour for both progress and ROI from artificial intelligence.

Key findings

• 18.4% of technology leaders feel that the pace of technology change has deepened tech anxiety over the last 12 months, with 18.2% and 17.6% citing the challenges of teams working from home, and the need to engage with a growing number of decision makers, respectively
• Over 40% of technology leaders do not completely trust their data, and 84% are worried about their ability to deliver personalisation, questioning data maturity in the enterprise
• The results show that long-term leadership and decision making has been impacted by the economic volatility: nearly 50% of respondents believed that priorities had shifted to immediate operational needs, and 45% have experienced delayed investment in technology initiatives
• Confidence in leadership is in the balance: only half of enterprise technology leaders feel their CEO or Board have high tech literacy
• Worryingly almost 80% of enterprise CTOs and CIOs are concerned that AI will negatively impact their company’s carbon and sustainability commitments
• However in-spite of the challenges, almost 80% of UK CTOs and CIOs feel more secure in their jobs now than 12 months ago, and over 90% would recommend the specialism as a career path.

As CFOs navigate economic complexity the appetite for technology investment will feel more cautious than in recent years. So my advice to senior IT leaders is to plan for the long-term and prioritise nearfield. Test and learn. Build scalable foundations; measure what matters; innovate how you work, not just what you build; and work with organisations who put a premium on quality, simplicity and collaboration.

This comes at a time when the human connectivity that drives trust is under threat. As the modern workforce struggles between in-person collaboration and remote working, technology leaders don’t have the personal equity with their teams, line managers and boards that they enjoyed previously. 

Investment decisions are under higher scrutiny, procurement is deeply price sensitive, and boards, shareholders and investors are calling for more, with less, faster.

Yet across the market, progress is being made. Good leaders are building cultures that are open to change, and strong client-consultancy partnerships are building scalable technology platforms that are designed for change.

Debating change

In a well-informed and highly relevant debate at Crosstide HQ, our audience of CTOs and CIOs discussed: 

• CEO and Board tech maturity: How the responsibility to understand the issues sits on too few shoulders today and the opportunity ahead as today’s coaches become tomorrow’s leaders
• Personal data ownership: Including Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project, a decentralised web platform, which aims to give users more control over their data and identity 
• The fight against legacy: How enterprises can avoid building stacks that rapidly become outdated, including the use of composable architectures, and building for change over changing what’s been built
• The data opportunity: If AI is the forcing function that drives maturity in data foundations and governance, what else can these improved data ecosystems then enable?
• AI as a ‘foundational’ innovation: Has AI, like electricity, started as the disruptive force of an industrial revolution only to become the ubiquitous foundation?

The results reflect an extended period of change. Change in the economy; in the geopolitical landscape; in attitudes to what we build, how we build, where we build, and who we choose to collaborate with. Waves of disruption have defined almost a decade of volatility; Brexit, Covid-19, supply-chain disruption, semiconductor shortages, fast hiring, regrettable layoffs, artificial intelligence, and a rising deglobalisation of the technology supply chain. 

Underlying all is a simple truth. Progress is built on the energy of change, and those who plan for change are the best prepared to weather it

Download the report here.