The chief information officer (CDO) is a senior govt answerable for the utilization and governance of information throughout the group. Whereas the chief information officer title is commonly shortened to CDO, the position shouldn’t be confused with that of the chief digital officer, which can be continuously known as CDO.
“The chief information officer is the senior particular person, with a enterprise focus, who understands the technique and route of the enterprise, however their focus is on learn how to underpin that with information,” says Caroline Carruthers, director at consulting agency Carruthers and Jackson, former chief information officer of Community Rail, and co-author of The Chief Information Officer’s Playbook and Information-Pushed Enterprise Transformation: How you can Disrupt, Innovate and Keep Forward of the Competitors.
Capital One appointed the primary CDO in 2002. Just a few organizations adopted go well with within the decade that adopted. The appointment of CDOs has accelerated previously few years, in line with a 2021 quantitative world research of chief information officers lately launched by PwC’s world technique consultancy, Technique&. PwC’s consultancy discovered that solely 21% of the highest 2,500 publicly traded firms worldwide at the moment has a CDO in place, and nearly half of all CDOs have been appointed since 2019. Up to now, a lot of these appointments have been concentrated within the insurance coverage, banking, media and leisure, retail, and IT/know-how verticals.
NewVantage Companions’ Information and AI Management Government Survey 2022, however, discovered that 74% of the companies it surveyed had appointed chief information or analytics officers, or each mixed in a single position.
The distinction within the findings could stem from the place the CDO sits within the organizations surveyed. Technique& defines a CDO as “a single particular person at C-suite degree or one degree beneath, with accountability for the corporate’s strategic strategy to information.” NewVantage Companions takes a extra expansive view of the position.
Chief information officer wage
In keeping with compensation evaluation from Glassdoor, the median CDO wage is $232,961 per 12 months, with complete pay, together with bonuses and revenue share, starting from $142,000 to $399,000 yearly.
Chief information officer job description
The CDO oversees a variety of data-related features that will embody information administration, guaranteeing information high quality, and creating information technique. They could even be answerable for information analytics and enterprise intelligence — the method of drawing useful insights from information. Or some information administration features could fall to IT, and analytics could belong to a chief analytics officer, a title that some say is interchangeable with chief information officer.
Though some CIOs and CTOs see creation of a CDO as encroachment on their turf, Carruthers says the boundaries are distinct. CDOs are answerable for areas comparable to information high quality, information governance, grasp information administration, data technique, information science, and enterprise analytics.
“The distinction between the CDO and CIO in my thoughts is sort of clear, and I typically use the analogy of the bucket and the water,” Carruthers says. “The chief data officer is answerable for the bucket. They’re answerable for ensuring that the bucket is the appropriate dimension, that there aren’t any holes in it, that it’s secure, and that it’s in the appropriate place. The chief information officer is answerable for the fluid that goes within the bucket, comes out of the bucket, that it goes to the appropriate place, that it’s the appropriate high quality and the appropriate fluid to begin with. Neither the bucket nor the water work with out one another.”
Nonetheless, for now, the position of the chief information officer stays considerably unsettled and evolving. NewVantage Companions says 59.8% of its govt survey respondents really feel the chief information officer’s position stays nascent and evolving, whereas 40.2% say the position is profitable and established.
Chief information officer duties
In keeping with Gartner, the CDO is answerable for a agency’s enterprise-wide information and knowledge technique, governance, management, coverage improvement, and efficient exploitation.
Initially, the CDO position centered on compliance and information governance, however IDC’s State of the CDO Survey, performed between February and April 2020, discovered many chief information officers at the moment are additionally answerable for utilizing information to drive enterprise outcomes. IDC discovered that 80% of the highest KPIs used to measure chief information officer efficiency are business-oriented.
In keeping with IDC, chief information officer duties embody:
- Governance: Advising on, monitoring, and governing enterprise information
- Operations: Enabling information usability, availability, and effectivity
- Innovation: Driving enterprise digital transformation innovation, price discount, and income technology
- Analytics: Supporting analytics and reporting on merchandise, clients, operations, and markets
Chief information officer jobs
A current seek for chief information officer jobs on Certainly.com and LinkedIn confirmed positions obtainable in a variety of industries, together with retail, healthcare, media, insurance coverage, monetary providers, greater schooling, manufacturing, and authorities.
A sampling of chief information officer job descriptions exhibits key space of duties comparable to: evangelizing and speaking an information imaginative and prescient a crucial a part of development technique; creating strategic information entry insurance policies; main the design of analytics infrastructure; creating and executing a central information technique to drive income; overseeing information governance, information funding and partnerships; and strategizing with C-level colleagues.
Firms are in search of, for instance, extremely motivated, skilled innovators who’ve produced tangible outcomes, in addition to senior-level management over information and/or analytics departments for seven or extra years.
Chief information officer resume
Touchdown a CDO job requires a robust resume. For suggestions from know-how resume specialists on learn how to write the best resume for chief information officer positions, see “CDO resumes: 4 suggestions for touchdown a chief information officer position.”
CDO vs. chief analytics officer
Though chief information officer and chief analytics officer are two distinct roles, they need to each reside in the identical particular person, argues Man Gomis, associate on the recruiting firm BrainWorks.
“I’m discovering the perfect in school are combining the 2,” he says. “Most leaders in analytics wish to personal the information technique and the way the corporate treats information they usually wish to personal analytics.” It is sensible if you concentrate on it. Analytics is how information supplies worth, in order that’s a vital operate. On the similar time, you want a great information technique and good information administration otherwise you received’t get high quality information to investigate. Thus, Gomis says, “Finest follow is having a chief information technique and analytics officer who owns each information and analytics and works carefully with the CIO.”
NewVantage Companions says in 2022 many companies have adopted this mixture of chief information and chief analytics features right into a single chief information and analytics officer (CDAO) position. The agency says 44% of CDAOs now come from an information analytics or information science background, as in contrast with 29% who come from an information administration or information governance background.
To whom ought to the chief information officer report?
IDC says 59% of chief information officers at the moment report back to a enterprise chief. Moreover, 80% of the highest stakeholders chief information officers help are businesspeople, together with the CEO, COO, CFO, and head of digital transformation.
Whereas organizations are quickly adopting the chief information officer position, NewVantage says there’s nonetheless lots of confusion and disagreement on the mandate and significance of the place. Its survey discovered that 52% of individuals recognized the chief information officer as the manager with main accountability for information technique and outcomes. In 2022, 48% of respondents stated different C-level executives had main accountability or claimed there was no single level of accountability.
Technique& believes the CDO position ought to sit on the C-suite degree or one degree beneath as a result of “appointing a senior-level CDO is important for management groups searching for to maximise the potential of information as a strategic asset all through the group.”
Carruthers agrees. She says the chief information officer might report to numerous locations within the group, however she favors the CEO or COO.
“The one place that I consider it’s completely fallacious for it to sit down is into the CIO,” she says. “Because the position evolves and matures, it’s reporting in to different locations within the enterprise. It’s transferring towards extra of a seat on the prime desk, which it needs to be. For me, the CIO and the CDO ought to very a lot be working hand-in-hand as a partnership, and a partnership doesn’t work when one associate works for the opposite associate.”
Anthony Scriffignano, chief information scientist at Dun & Bradstreet, who himself studies to Dun & Bradstreet’s CEO, says there’s no single reply to the query of the place a chief information officer ought to report. “I’ve seen the position in finance, IT, advertising and marketing, R&D, it might even be product improvement,” he says. “Usually it’s a brand new position, maybe created by an individual who was overwhelmed with the calls for of their very own position, so that you’ll typically discover it in that a part of the group as a result of that’s who created it. However that doesn’t essentially imply that’s the place it ought to keep.”
What to search for in a chief information officer
In keeping with NewVantage Companions’ survey, 51% of executives at Fortune 1000 companies really feel {that a} profitable chief information officer should be an exterior change agent with recent views. In the meantime, 14% held the other view: They felt a profitable chief information officer should be an organization veteran who understands the tradition and historical past of the group. Respondents have been additionally break up on the chief information officer’s background: 10% believed a profitable chief information officer needs to be stuffed by a line-of-business govt who has been accountable for monetary outcomes, whereas 19% stated the chief information officer will need to have an information scientist or technologist background.
Gomis says he’s seen chief information officers come from advertising and marketing backgrounds, and that some are MBAs who’ve by no means labored in information analytics earlier than. “Most of them have failed, however the firms that employed them felt that the influencer ability set was extra essential than the information analytics ability set,” he says.
Good folks expertise definitely might be helpful for getting out of the bind many new chief information officers discover themselves in. “One of many largest errors is just not understanding what it’s going to take to succeed, by way of expectations,” Gomis says. “For those who have a look at lots of the individuals who have had the title of chief information officers and chief analytics officer over the past three years, there’s an amazing quantity of turnover.” Whenever you speak to them and their former employers, “It seems that the expectation of the corporate and the candidates weren’t aligned,” he provides.
Usually, the issue is unrealistic expectations from an employer. “The largest mistake firms make is to count on that as a result of they’ve employed somebody the issue is solved,” says Justin Cerilli, who heads the information and analytics follow for consultancy Russell Reynolds Associates. “Really, you’re simply beginning to remedy the issue — the robust selections are nonetheless to return. That’s whenever you begin asking who our persons are, what our processes are, and the way do we alter our tradition. CEOs inform chief information officers to vary all the pieces to get the top outcomes they need, however don’t wish to change the way in which they do something.”
