ASEAN CIO role gaining importance in business
ConvergenceAsia staff
23/07/2008

According to a study unveiled by INSEAD and IBM, 94 per cent of CIOs in ASEAN say that the role of the ASEAN Chief Information Officer (CIO) is gaining more importance in the business where their organisations’ leadership, which measures the excellence of people and leadership skills, currently lags behind its technology management and technology skills across ASEAN.

CIOs polled view leading employees as a key capability stating talent management critical to achieving leadership, yet talent development ranked bottom as both a top management priority and a current source of performance excellence.

Only 29.9 per cent of CIOs in the survey felt that their organisation’s performance in talent management was stronger than their industry’s – a concern as CIOs concur that talent is a crucial ingredient in building organisations’ strategic capabilities through initiatives such as change management and innovation.

The 2008 ASEAN CIO Leadership Study was conducted with more than 160 CIOs from local and multinational companies in six ASEAN countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – between January and May 2008.

The survey highlights managing talent, change and customers and diversity as key priorities of ASEAN CIOs.

Overall, the ASEAN CIO does view himself/herself as a valued member of the company’s senior management team (88.5 per cent). Many CIOs voiced their optimism that full integration of the CIO role with other key players on the executive board was inevitable. This is consistent with previous research by INSEAD which had termed this trend ‘the democratisation of the C-space’.

Although most CIOs praised the move of CIO functions towards a higher strategic level, some saw this development as adding to the CIO’s ‘regular workload’. CIOs interviewed show a persistent degree of anxiety over their prospect once some of the major current IT initiatives in business process and change management have been completed.

In addition, business process was reported as an increasingly crucial building block in ASEAN companies’ technology architecture. 79.6 per cent of CIOs reported that their organisations were using IT capabilities to enable process improvement.

Of those surveyed, 76.7 per cent acknowledged that prior experience in business operations was becoming an increasingly important consideration when recruiting a CIO. Also, 81.2 per cent of CIOs drew on resourcefulness as one of the strengths of their leadership approach.

’’The overall survey results are in line with global trends. Like their global counterparts, ASEAN CIOs find that it is their role to promote closer collaboration between IT and the rest of the business,’’ says Bruno Lanvin, Executive Director, eLab, INSEAD.

’’They also feel that they are a valued member of the senior management team, as more and more ASEAN organisations see the strategic importance of IT for their businesses,’’ concludes Soumitra Dutta, The Roland Berger Chaired Professor in Business and Technology, and Professor of Information Systems, INSEAD.

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