Adam Spearing. Image: Jan Paul Heijmans
In an era of rapid technological advances, CIOs have a huge responsibility in managing enterprise data to boost growth and innovation, says ServiceNow’s Adam Spearing.
The proliferation and accessibility of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) applications are increasing by the day. Such breakneck evolution means the chief information officer (CIO) is under escalating pressure to adopt these tools in their organisation – pressure that comes not just from the board, but from employees, customers and investors.
This raises a tough challenge: how can CIOs respond to these demands by moving fast and decisively to unlock the benefits of GenAI, while safeguarding the wider business from the risks associated with this technology?
Managing risks
The risks that accompany GenAI adoption are extensive. If managed ineffectively, these tools have the potential to cause real damage to an enterprise – in terms of both security and brand integrity.
These risks stem from GenAI’s dual remit, as an inward- and outward-facing tool. Increasingly, we’re seeing how it is not just being used to optimise businesses internally for cost efficiencies, but also to transform external interactions by linking customers directly to the processes that serve them.
Provided CIOs can adopt and deploy GenAI to fulfil this dual remit, they’ll create and deliver new value for the business. And increasingly, this is how they’ll be assessed and rewarded.
If doing this as fast as possible, with minimal risk, is the goal, the overriding priority has to be managing the data these tools need and generate.
For CIOs, this ranges from creating an overarching AI vision for the enterprise to ensuring ongoing data governance.
Just as chief financial officers have a responsibility to make sure that financial data is aligned, compliant and governed across the business, so CIOs now have an even more extensive duty – protecting and preserving all their organisation’s data – both internal and customer facing.
Governance to the fore
Where GenAI is concerned, most organisations still overestimate the short-term impacts and under-estimate the longer-term opportunity.
Companies have been doing the same thing with technology for years. But with GenAI it’s a potentially critical error. Too much focus on, say, rushing to capture dramatic efficiencies through process reinvention, raises the risk of overlooking data integrity – a pitfall that could prove to be catastrophic.
Because data breaches can have such drastic repercussions, CIOs’ number-one priority is to get to what’s realistically achievable with GenAI as rapidly as possible – without undermining the intrinsic integrity of the data or security.
This propels data governance to front and centre, not as a ‘one-and-done’ exercise, but as a continuously revisited and updated activity. As part of this, CIOs have to revisit their relationships with risk officers, find ways to forge closer links with them and collaborate to develop new, holistic risk-management approaches.
These new approaches will incorporate a clear goal: maximising the gains from GenAI, while protecting the business, its people and its customers.
Citizen developers have posed challenges to CIOs since the advent of client server computing. Gen AI and the acceleration of democratised ‘low-code/no-code’ development, take these challenges to a whole new level.
CIOs as data custodians
So, where to begin? CIOs need to be ready and willing to completely reimagine their role in the organisation. That’s because they’re no longer solely responsible for the technology infrastructure. From now on, they’re data custodians too – responsible for managing enterprise data for growth and innovation. And for doing so securely.
As their organisation’s data guardian, the CIO must take the lead on data governance. At a foundational level, that means knowing where enterprise data ‘is’ at any given moment, comprehensively mapping and monitoring all sources, in and outside the business.
This has never been more essential, or more demanding. In the GenAI era, an organisation’s data no longer resides in one place. It’s in perpetual motion, always flowing from one place to another, existing temporarily when and where it’s needed.
CIOs must commit to sustaining the quality of enterprise data, introducing robust verification and refinement processes. And they must define and develop a prescient data strategy, tightly linked to business goals, with strong guardrails and watertight frameworks that ensure data quality, privacy and security.
Equally crucial, CIOs will be responsible for nurturing and embedding data fluency throughout the business, from boardroom to back office to front office. By providing a connection between data, the business and decision-making at every level, CIOs become clearly identified as value creators, elevating their role still further within the enterprise.
Networks of experience
There’s so much happening in this space – and so fast – that organisations need to be ready to learn from each other. For CIOs, that means working out how they can free up time to engage with partners and peers that are truly shaping the market. By making use of existing networks, creating new ones and continuously learning, CIOs will be far better equipped to understand what their GenAI priorities need to be.
Inevitably, these networks will include technology vendors. As the providers of GenAI tools, they have a responsibility to be transparent about how their algorithms operate, and willing to allow their customers to inspect them. That’s not all. They also need to explain where data is sent and processed, and how easily it can be managed in an extremely complex and fast-moving regulatory environment.
Time for a new approach
GenAI is a huge opportunity and challenge for CIOs. It demands a fresh approach that puts data governance at its heart.
Before too long, organisations will be using AI to fine-tune their own data governance – continuously monitoring for potential vulnerabilities and operating autonomously to remedy them. It’s one more striking example of how AI is reshaping every role and every area of business activity.
And CIOs are at the forefront of guiding their organisations through this reinvention.
Adam Spearing is head of AI innovation for EMEA at ServiceNow, a cloud-based platform for digital workflows.
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