FEATURE : STATE OF THE CIO

Jason Janicke , Senior Vice President of EMEA & APJ at Alteryx , explains that the rapid rise of

Generative AI presents a significant opportunity for CIOs to become pivotal change agents in shaping the future of their organisations .

Success in stepping up into this role , however , isn ’ t guaranteed . CIOs need the right priorities to ensure that scaling Gen AI strikes the right balance between the technical and business needs of IT – and ultimately fuels the goals of the organisation ’ s broader strategy .

The data stack is just the start

Organisational tech stacks need to undergo change to be positioned for the era of intelligence with ubiquitous Gen AI and Machine Learning . Squeezing maximum insight from company data is essential to discovering efficiency gains , increasing profitability and uncovering new revenue streams .

The right data stack is important – but even more critical is having a way for business users to access , and generate insights from , data . High-quality data is required as an input for AI to generate high-quality output .

Modern data stacks facilitate this when they nail the fundamentals : storage , data governance , ETL , scalability and flexibility across on-premises , public , private and / or multi-cloud environments .

A recent PwC survey found that 64 % of UK CEOs see Gen AI as enabling greater productivity in their workforce . That rings true given the success that businesses are enjoying from initial pilot programmes of the technology .

So , now that you have your data stack optimised , how can you ensure your business users can interact with it to drive the insights that the business needs ? Business users often feel ‘ locked out ’ of enterprise data with cumbersome reporting and request processes .

In a survey of global IT business leaders , we found that businesses have run an average of three pilots using gen AI , with 77 % stating that the projects were very or extremely successful .

Charting the course for scaling AI , however , is paved with difficulty . The responsibility falls to IT decisionmakers to innovate while navigating budget cuts against a precarious macroeconomic backdrop . Despite this , the meteoric rise of Gen AI is a massive opportunity for CIOs to forge a role as the change agent that shapes their organisation ’ s future – steering the ship through tumultuous times .

CIOs can empower business users – while maintaining governance and security – with self-service analytics tools that make sophisticated AI-driven functionality intuitive . With a functional analytics ‘ interface ’ to the data stack , CIOs can map and shepherd AI applications toward high-impact use cases .

This looks different for every business – but it ’ s the CIO who has the ideal mix of technology and business acumen to identify these use cases and the required data , in collaboration with business leads . It could be data stemming from CRM tools , financial systems , web analytics or all three . The important parts are ensuring

38 INTELLIGENTCIO EUROPE www . intelligentcio . com