Ask A CIO: What Will Your Role Be In Five Years?

CIOs agree that the job is rapidly evolving and becoming more strategic. We asked them to pull out their crystal balls and predict where they'll be five years down the road. Take a look at what they said:

Tuan Ngo, Director of IT at Hay Group Inc.

I'm constantly seeing us changing. It's good. We just went into what is culture changing. It's part of the vision of our new CEO...He's challenging. He's very understanding, so it's okay. We operate in 100 locations in 49 countries and what he wants to do is break down all the walls, break down all the barriers and become one unit, and it's not easy. We have to integrate the technology and business processes. It's a challenge. We're still working on it. So far people around the globe, around these 100 locations are loving it. We'll see.

Bradley Fordham, CTO at Amplify

Much, much more analytics and intelligence. I think that the role will shift from general reports and questions to much more predictive analytics.

Kevin Pashuk, CIO at Appleby College

It's a great opportunity but there's no automatic invite to the leadership table. And you've got to educate. There's a lot of education going on. It's a lot of learning soft skills, which are the hard skills for people attracted to technology in the first place. It's the ability to hire tremendous people. It's not your traditional skill set, so it is an evolving position. It's a position where every day I learn a whole bunch because the world is changing. But I also have to understand the trends and learning to read the signs, and what signs I should be paying attention to...What are things that are really going to impact me? What are the waves that are coming towards us?

Minh Le, Senior Director, Enterprise Applications at Ignite Restaurant Group

In my opinion, especially in the restaurant industry, IT will have a lot more visibility. There is so much innovation we can do, even at the restaurant when people come in from waiting systems, to payment systems, to feedback to advertising, social, mobile. There's so much there that not many of the restaurants in the industry have started to tap yet. Definitely [a lot of opportunity].

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