From the New Normal to What Next – CIOs’ perspective

Most CIOs, have travelled the journey from the abnormal to the new normal. Few of them, have demonstrated exceptional agility and speed in responding and recovering from the situation.

And there is high enthusiasm and solid work going on to prepare for the next phase`, significantly in the backdrop of Work from Anywhere.

Aforeserve conducted a study of 128 CIOs in large and medium enterprises across 10 sectors in India to find out: •How do they see the new workplace emerging? •Are there shifting priorities as they navigate from the current state to the new reality? • What influences their decisions on infrastructure, management and support ?

Here are a few highlights.

Great Place to Work: Work from Anywhere

Recent developments have proven that much of the work hitherto considered to be only achievable in the physical office space, is more than doable remotely. Increasingly affordable, practical and scalable collaboration technologies -that was severely under-utilised - offer a great solution to WFX , X being Anywhere.

A third of CIOs believe 75% or more of their workforce with Work from Anywhere.

Why then would companies be rushing to send every of its workforce back to office ? CIOs give a thumping nod. There's a CIO focus on enabling Work from Anywhere.

Emerging Priorities: Infrastructure & Tools

While CIOs are preparing to support a predominantly Work from Anywhere workforce, we reached out to understand their top priorities.

IT Teams have responded well to the basic needs of meetings and conferences, they are busy reimagining to augment the digital office space through cloud services - be it applications, storage, or security.

On the digital infrastructure, they are gearing up to ensure a safe, secure, accessible, and available environment. Balancing access to security is the impending paradigm.

Data availability, throughput, and security can build a great place to (remote) work.

For those who have to work from the office, the technology demand for ensuring health, and hygiene has been prioritized in the shorter term. Contactless solutions powered by AI/Robotics is are being tested fot adoption.

Changing Landscape of Support

CIOs will be re-evaluating Service Providers as they move from new normal to what next. Frontline support teams will do good to upskill on multi-platform remote infra support. Even basic communication skills and v-etiquettes on how they virtually collaborate with users need to be re-configured. Helpdesks will turn automated and intelligent. It will free time from the support team while delivering efficiency, accountability, and superior customer experience.

The Empathetic CIO

On the people front, CIOs are empathetic to the productivity and well-being of the workforce - it is no longer just an agenda of HR. Balancing the business need and people need is a learning zone that most CIOs are stepping in with technology as an empathetic enabler.

We just held a virtual round table to validate our findings from three dynamic CIOs. Udit Pahwa from Huhtamaki, Yogesh Kumar from Tata Power SED and Vijay Anand from Dynamic CRM strongly resonated with our findings on emerging workplace, shifting priorities and changing landscape. They also emphasised on the need to prepare a standard device policy, stepping up education and awareness on cybersecurity and automation of service processes. Click here to download an infographics of the research report.