Global CIO: Prove IT's Business Value To Your CEO -- Or Else

"Formalizing the innovation process is more important than ever and we need to focus on and invest in the outcome of our innovation, as opposed to simply executing one-off tactics," says Perretta. He explains that large transaction-based systems being built today have to be designed in such a way that will make them relevant to the future market. "IT needs to be plugged into the long-term innovation plans of the business so that it can provide the capabilities needed when the commercial opportunity arises," he explains.

Servicing global clients in a very complex environment at a minute's notice requires dynamic, reliable, and effortless collaboration. IT must be able to respond immediately, regardless of where the team sits. "As organizations grow, the ability to instantly engage all the company's capabilities makes it not only a much more agile customer-focused provider, but a more formidable competitor as well," Perretta says. Social networking capabilities also enable the enterprise to bring the global workforce closer together, connecting the people who can accelerate delivery.

"A lot of CIOs typically had the luxury of controlling much of the technology environment, but that is no longer the case," says Morrison. "You now have to think in terms of innovating and supporting technology that is open to the public domain, not just the business world." This adds an extra layer of complexity in successfully meeting enterprise customers' needs since CIOs now have to think about aligning architecture with more publicly available applications and capabilities.

"There will be increasingly more outsourced work coming back in-house, and what will be left out-of-house will be transaction processes and services as CIOs focus internally on data and enterprise information management as well as insight and predictive capabilities," she says. If the 1990s was the era of ERP and outsourcing, Morrison says the next decade will be all about the dynamics of information.

"As CIOs, we need to be more focused in-house on initiatives that accelerate the value we deliver to the business by engineering robust and high-performing systems that anticipate business change and materially speed coding and testing," he says. Perretta believes this positions the business for growth and improves the efficiency and effectiveness of global third-party providers.

"In the next 10 years, CIOs will be driving revenue rather than just serving as an internal support system," says Morrison. From innovation to architecture, she explains that the role will be more externally focused.