CxO/C-suit role in IT

Member’s Speak organised by The Management Club was held on 19 October at the VIP room of the Galadari Hotel, Colombo. The speaker was the past Chairman of TMC Mt Lavinia and currently working as the Regional Manager at Palo Alto Networks, a US based leading company in to Cyber Security. Ashoke Baddage delivered a presentation on the role of CxO/C-suit in Information Technology in an organisation. 

He opened the presentation explaining why CxO has to play a vital role in this area despite many organisations having a designate CIO or Chief Digital Officer. He went on to elaborate the roles and responsibilities of a CxO in general and then explaining how modern CxOs are pressurised to introduce technology to deliver products and services at a lower cost and at a higher speed.

He highlighted that many Sri Lankan companies and their Boards are not IT savvy and in today’s context it is important for them to be aware of how technology can help their businesses to grow. It is not their role to understand the technical side of technology but at least to the level of why and how it helps to address many issues they face day to day. 

Further he said, technology is seen as just expenditure in the eyes of CFOs and CEOs and the CIOs are struggling to justify the costs associated with technology. Hence there should be a balance between these two and it is an appropriate time for them to understand why they invest and what is the ROI. He explained where technology is moving today and why many enterprises are moving to cloud solutions rather than investing on their own infrastructure. He further explained available cloud solutions and the pros and cons of same. He further explained the main technology trends that enterprises should be aware of which includes cloud solutions as well. One of the key factors he said, is how a CxO understand technology integration in to many areas of their businesses. Few areas are increasing efficiency whether it is products or service delivery, reducing costs, increase quality of work-life balance, encourage innovation and new products/services development, how customers could be satisfied and so on. He said all of these areas can be improved using IT and that is why a CxO or the Board should be aware of the importance of it.

While these can bring wonders to organisations today securing companies intellectual assets and data is becoming a board room discussion today. Hence CxOs should always ask questions as to how secure their businesses are. Unlike yesteryear, modern threats are coming in different ways and means and securing data from these threats also be a concern of a CxO.

The event was well attended and a Q&A session was opened at the end of the presentation and he answered many questions from process point of view and from security aspect too. It seems that many were concerned about the security aspect more than anything else.