Today’s CIOs are expected to do more than simply enable business value—they’re responsible for driving and accounting for it. Yet, many find that external factors frustrate the level of impact they can achieve, whether it’s shadow IT or the underutilization of deployed systems and software.
To tackle this pressing issue, InformationWeek asked three IT leaders for their takes on how CIOs demonstrate business value. The short answer: Calculations can’t be done in a vacuum.
### Embracing Business Partnerships and Shadow IT
Michael Ringman, CTO at business process outsourcing and AI-powered customer engagement technology provider Ibex, underscored the need for strong business relationships. He believes that shadow IT is a litmus test of IT effectiveness.
Ringman explained that effective business-IT partnerships require CIOs to understand the business to drive value across the organization. “It’s like being married. You both come together and bring 50%. It isn’t one part of the organization bringing 100%, or even 75%,” he said.
Rather than viewing shadow IT negatively, Ringman sees it as an opportunity. Finding shadow IT in the organization is “super cool” because it indicates that the business has recognized a problem and identified a solution. “It shows you where you’re not engaging with the business to help create and drive that value. I seek that stuff out,” he added.
He also shared his approach to project success: making a lot of small investments and failing fast rather than undertaking big-bang projects, which leads to a higher percentage of successful initiatives.
### Change Management Is Relentless and Adaptive
The need for change management has always been important, but it has become critical as businesses undergo digital transformation, said Scott Weller, CTO of AI-powered credit risk analysis and monitoring company EnFi.
AI amplifies this need — “at a much more rapid pace.” Weller noted that IT is not only being asked to measure itself at the end of a project but also to measure the efficiencies or revenue they’re creating during the project, acting as hyper evaluators of technologies to connect these elements.
“Evaluating technology requires intimate knowledge of the business use cases you’re supporting,” Weller emphasized.
He pointed out that large enterprises adept at digital transformation reorganize IT to collaborate closely with the business, aiming to capitalize on specific market opportunities. As companies undergo AI transformation, embedding technologists inside business units is key—either temporarily based on expertise or structured within a hub-and-spoke model.
“The companies having more successful AI POCs and trials generally don’t have AI councils. They’re embedding AI expertise in the business team and helping to procure solutions almost as separate nodes that can work independently,” Weller explained.
This approach is top-down versus bottom-up to ensure strategic impact while being intentionally incremental. It requires a clear mandate—not just executive buy-in but also the vision and structure to make the change happen.
“It’s no longer massive implementations across teams. It’s being intentionally incremental, starting with very small, practical use cases and expanding that over time,” Weller said.
Weller also described how their two-week sprints evolved into mandated assessments of impact every three days. This frequent reevaluation helps align business and IT leaders and clarifies the end-state goals of sprints.
“I think those three-day cycles help the team reevaluate—should we keep going? Are we getting closer? Are there new decisions? What did we learn from this new thing? It also allows you to decide if there’s something new coming, whether we should pause for a moment and see what that is. You can also make new decisions,” he said.
### Expect Chaos, Behave Accordingly
Many external factors affect the value of IT—from vendors and selected solutions to regulatory changes, shifts in market conditions, and ongoing technology innovation. To cut through the chaos, Dmytro Voloshyn, CTO and co-founder of global language learning marketplace Preply, emphasized that data helps.
For example, last year everyone at Preply was excited about new enterprise AI tools. As part of the project, Preply partnered with OpenAI to assess the tools’ impact on productivity. By calculating the time saved across different departments in the first year after deployment, they were able to predict the total amount of money that could be saved.
“Money talks,” Voloshyn said.
He echoed a common refrain from the other experts: “If you want to impact the business, you should understand how the business works.”
One of Voloshyn’s biggest internal partners is the CFO, with whom he does long-term planning. Having a shared language facilitates more effective collaboration, resulting in a shared vision and roadmap.
While specific details may change over time—such as which AI company is the “leading vendor” — there is general agreement between Voloshyn and the CFO on longer-term investments, ensuring the company makes appropriate investments in technology and workforce upskilling.
“It’s a bit of an art to remain operationally effective and still strategic. One of the most important things is to stay agile and human-centered, because with all this automation and changes we see with AI, human connection will become an even more valuable element of how organizations operate,” Voloshyn said.
—
In summary, driving business value as a CIO today requires strong business relationships, adaptive change management, data-driven decision-making, and a balance between long-term planning and short-term agility. By embedding IT deeply into business units and maintaining transparent communication, CIOs can better navigate external challenges and deliver meaningful impact across their organizations.
https://www.informationweek.com/it-management/ask-the-expert-how-cios-prove-business-value
