Nick Tzitzon of SAP on the Changing Role of the CIO

Nick Tzitzon, EVP of Marketing and Communications for SAP, recently was interviewed on CXOTalk where he talked about the changing role of the CIO:

Every CXO Became a Technology Buyer

If you think about how enterprise technology has evolved… if you think 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you had the Chief Information Officer which was the single dominant point of contact inside most businesses for how a business uses technology. And then what happened? Every CXO became a technology buyer and the CXO technology buyer was interested in very specific business outcomes.

If you’re a Chief Human Resources Officer you buy human capital management software because you want to inspire and retain and train your workforce. If you’re a Chief Marketing or Sales Officer you want to grow your business, you want to attract customers, you want to deliver new customer experiences.

The CIO and CXO Conversations Must Be the Same

The CIO in many cases, because of their long-term relationships was stuck in one conversation while the CXOs went into a different conversation. We want to push them together because that’s where they belong. The CIO is an incredible resource in companies to be able to tell you here’s a business problem and a technology that can help. As technology is maturing so quickly with AI and all the other breakthroughs you need the CIO to be a leader in these companies. But the CIO conversation and the CXO conversation have got to be the same conversation.

What opportunity are we trying to seize? What problem are we trying to solve? It can’t be technology for technology sake because if it’s that then a technology vendor like SAP is not relevant. What are we trying to do for the business? That’s the question and a conversation that we need to be part of and that our peers want to be part of as well.