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25% of firms will have chief digital officer by 2015: Gartner

Oragnisations are not only digitising functions like market spend and R&D, but are also digitising how they service their clients

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K Rajani Kanth Hyderabad
Last Updated : Jan 25 2013 | 5:33 AM IST

By 2015, 25 per cent of organisations will have a chief digital officer, according to information technology research and advisory company Gartner Inc.

Organisations are digitising segments of business, such as moving marketing spend from analog to digital, or digitising the research and development budget. Secondly, organisations are digitising how they service their clients, in order to drive higher client retention. Thirdly, they are turning digitization into new revenue streams.

Gartner analysts said this was resulting in every budget becoming an IT budget. To address these changes, organisations will create the role of a chief digital officer as part of the business unit leadership, which will become a new seat at the executive table, they said.

The chief digital officer will prove to be the most exciting strategic role in the decade ahead, and IT leaders have the opportunity to be the leaders who will define it,” David Willis, vice-president and analyst at Gartner, said in a release on Tuesday.

“The chief digital officer plays in the place where the enterprise meets the customer, where the revenue is generated and the mission accomplished. They are in charge of the digital business strategy. That’s a long way from running back-office IT, and it’s full of opportunity,” he added.

Willis said that the forces of cloud, social, mobile and information were reconfiguring how people work and live. It’s a world in which business and personal lives are intertwined. A world with fewer commands and control restrictions that stifle productivity and innovation.
 
“It’s an environment where information technology does not define the rules. Instead it is a key ingredient in achieving personal and enterprise productivity and innovation. Where technology is so natural and pervasive that we don’t even need to hold it in our hands. It’s just a part of our lives,” he said.

According to him, security investments are going to dramatically increase. An already large security market is about to get much bigger, growing by 56% from the current levels in five years time, while cloud security will almost triple, Will said, adding that some companies were already doubling or tripling their security budgets, for example in the health care industry.

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First Published: Oct 23 2012 | 1:20 PM IST

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