Ashwin Rangan, who has been in the CxO game for three decades at ICANN, Rockwell International, Walmart and Bank of America, has seen his share of technology cycles and generative AI is just the latest.

In an interview, Rangan, currently Managing Director of the Insight Group and BT150 member, outlined the progression of the CIO role and connected the dots between today's AI-driven technology inflection points and past innovation curves.

Here's a look at some of the takeaways from our chat.

How the role of CIO has changed. Rangan said 30 years ago, the CIO was thought of as a back-office automation role. "The need at the time was the implementation of global ERP. In the mid-1990s, the Internet was just starting to become available. Networking was inordinately expensive, but for the first time you had the ability to leverage one global ERP working in multiple currencies, regions and customer types with different formats and invoices," said Rangan. "Harmonizing these basic business transactions had everything to do with back-office automation."

He said today, the CIO is more front facing. "Today, most of the action for CIOs is in the front of the house where it's about customer engagement and value delivery and understanding product development," said Rangan. "You still have to be cognizant of being an efficient, lean operation, but the CIO is with the business leaders now understanding what drives the business."

Business alignment. Rangan said CIOs became more aligned with the business over time, but the dotcom boom and the emergence of the Internet pushed tech and business alignment forward.

"Right around the 2003-2008 timeframe technology and business started to have conversations that were more value driven and purpose driven. The most progressive of companies now are starting to have conversations about strategy, where the business strategy and the IT strategy conversations are the same. You can't have a business strategy conversation without also having an IT strategy conversation at the same time."

AI budgets and choosing when to ride new technology waves. Rangan said it's early days for generative AI, but not AI and machine learning. He noted that a lot of generative AI will be consumed in existing enterprise technology applications. That won't be new budget per se. On the other end of the spectrum there will be enterprises that see how generative AI can differentiate their businesses. They'll spend it if the conditions--data, culture, talent--are in place. When budgeting for AI, enterprises need to focus and think through their FOMO and sometimes choose to hang back.

"If the ROI was clear up front, I would be quick out the gate," said Rangan, who noted he chose to be an early mover at Rockwell with SAP. "In other cases, I've chosen to wait with new technologies because while the technology looked promising, the return on investment was not necessarily as promising."

Rangan said genAI is developing so fast that first mover advantages may not last long because the roadblocks today may be resolved quickly. "The price you pay for waiting will not be high because we are all learning at the same time," he said.

Vendor management. During his time as a CIO, Rangan said he took a portfolio management approach to his enterprise technology vendors. "You may have a large vendor that has the promise of delivering something compelling for your business," explained Rangan. "In that case, it makes sense to have some of your bets with that vendor. But you need your hedges. You can also have startups that are narrow and deeply focused on your specific domain. There could be potential for strategic alignment and partnership, perhaps even an investment. You need a careful analysis of the chessboard and not put all of your chips in one square."

More from the genAI field:

Business Research Themes

Data to Decisions, Next-Generation Customer Experience, Tech Optimization

Roles

Chief Information Officer

Tags

#AI #CDO #CIO #Analytics