Many 2024 CIO predictions sound familiar. Lead AI initiatives, partner with the business, work more flexibly and champion security initiatives. I hear these often, but I rarely see mention of the driver behind them: the need for speed.  

Emerging technologies are coming at a faster pace than I have ever seen. Even though these predictions sound familiar, the speed requirement means CIOs are facing a completely new set of demands in 2024. 

On top of that, as IT leaders, we are being asked to guide AI strategy and contribute to business growth. As Sridevi Pasumarthi, Head of Business Technology at Gusto recently shared: “There's an expectation that if you do AI, that directly will impact gross margin,” or as a recent CIO article articulated: “CIOs of the future will be…driving their own value like mini businesses in their own right.” In other words, building new muscles as technology leaders, and delivering at the pace of the modern market, which is fast. 

Automation is where companies find speed 

While the buzz around digital transformation is converting to AI transformation, the evolution of business processes from manual to automated is ongoing. AI will only accelerate the automation of work. 

There is a lot that falls under the scope of automation. It can range from automating one-off tasks to fully automating end-to-end processes that stitch together hundreds of tasks. We’ve seen companies flounder with task automation for the better part of the last 10 years. The real speed comes when companies embrace a new automation mindset that thinks in terms of complete processes.  

For example, when a new employee is onboarded at our company, no IT employees lift a finger. That’s not to say that new employees are onboarded without IT involvement, we’ve just gotten to the point where that process, which spans across HR, finance and IT, is fully automated. That allows us to bring top-tier talent onboard with great speed and frees up our team from menial tasks like app provisioning to focus on work that directly impacts our bottom line. 

Automation of business processes is the primary source of speed for IT leaders - and in 2024 we will no doubt see automation happening at record levels.  

Democratization of IT is at a tipping point 

The chart below, which shows the percentages of automation done by business teams and IT teams, demonstrates that democratization is at a tipping point. IT is holding onto a narrow majority of the automation work but is very close to ceding that majority to business teams.  

When my career began in IT - we were programming in COBOL, racking servers and owning everything that was considered process automation in the organization. Today, that is completely different.  

This is a necessary transition - because it is how we will execute at the speed required. We need to deliver more, faster. Many IT organizations are being asked to do more with less. By tapping into the ingenuity and skills of the business teams, we can overcome resourcing problems to deliver at the scale needed. Trends like AI, low-code and cloud delivery models will continue to bolster this.  

The need for speed makes IT teams more strategic 

It would be a mistake to look at the pie chart above and fear irrelevance. However, that misplaced dread is exactly why many CIOs discount the concept of democratization as a terrible path. I used to think that way.  

I remember getting into a shouting match with our head of sales operations in a previous role about who controlled the Salesforce administration. After all, I was employee #70 at Salesforce - Marc Benioff hired me! Salesforce was my domain, right?? Wrong! That was my fear of irrelevance getting the best of me - when I should have seen the bigger picture.  

That way of operating is unthinkable to me with today’s requirements for speed. We need to deliver and operate at a pace that is far too fast to be holding on to past ideas of control and centralization.  

In the big picture for IT, this means we are becoming more valuable to our organizations than ever. The centrality of technology to every organization’s future means that we have a much more valuable role to play. I see IT stepping into a player-coach role, where we are not only automating the business, but acting as guardians who protect it from threats, and guides who help others deliver on a new level - not only more effectively, but faster.