Held at KPMG, 1 St Peter’s Square, Manchester, over 100 CIOs and technology leaders gathered to hear the results of the 2016 Harvey Nash / KPMG CIO Survey.

Our photographer was there to capture it all. Take a look in our photo album.

Our guests on stage were:

Survey Finding Speakers
Jonathan Mitchell, Harvey Nash
Lisa Heneghan, KPMG

The panel were:
Bob Brown
CIO, Manchester City Council
Lesley Salmon
European CIO, Kellogg’s Plc
Matt Stephenson
IT Director – Software, COX Automotive

Tweets – Five of the best

Andy Flower
‏@andy_flower_ Great night at #hnkpmgciosurvey really enjoyed the topics as well as speaking with old and new faces!

Darren Earnshaw
@d_earnshaw Gender diversity improving? 11% survey respondents were female – long way to go guys! #hnkpmgciosurvey
‏@d_earnshaw IT skill shortages & focus on internal creativity – but are Corporates looking at external innovation enough? #hnkpmgciosurvey

Jonathan Mitchell ‏
@Cioadvisors Tricky question for the panel at #hnkpmgciosurvey “what do you have to do to become a hipster CIO”.

Mario Devargas
@MarioDevargas2 #hnkpmgciosurvey talent or lack if it in IT. Has always been an issue; I struggled 20 yrs ago as CIO. However it is Not an excuse for bad IT

Phil Jones ‏
@PhilJones40 Good quote from @LHeneghanCIOA ‘IT needs to be a watering hole, a place for people to gather through choice not necessity’ #hnkpmgciosurvey

Quotes – Five of the best

1/ Disruption is happening in many places. For instance in Kellogg’s one of their competitors is now Amazon. It is our jobs as technologists to make what we do relevant to the organisation and help drive the innovation agenda.

2/ One member of the audience commented that recruiting the right talent remains difficult, and in some instances HR can be a blocker. Ironically part of the challenge is HR’s use of technology – an overreliance on portals is forcing recruitment into a tick box process, and missing good candidates.

3/ Bob on diversity: there are elements of things going on that we just don’t see as men. We need more diversity, it’s still disappointing even when you try hard. We need to find other ways to get the workforce – we may need to partner with others. Succession planning is really important.

4/ Cars didn’t fundamentally change for 100 years, but in the last 15 years or so, technology has radically re-shaped the car. Matt commented that car sharing communities and autonomous cars are amongst the biggest threat to the traditional car buying industry, but somebody will still be buying the cars. Albert commented that recently he bought a car for his daughter and the main purchasing decision was based on the technology of the car (e.g. rear view video, safety features etc.)

5/ Lesley commenting on how CIOs are increasingly spending their time on other things: I spent two days last week with the European leadership team talking my about cereals. I bring lots of perspectives, from my experience in digital, to the viewpoints of my 18 year old son, to my experience as a mother.

And we couldn’t resist adding these quotes too…

6/ The Creative hipster CIO: One audience member commented how most of the room were male and middle aged. How can we become more creative, innovative and (drawing a smile from the audience) hipster?…

7/ Matt: We’re working building a more creative environment. We had our first coding competition – one of the three teams was not from IT – and one of the people in that team was a woman who has now joined the IT team. We asked what is holding us back attracting talent? One of the things was dress code; if the first thing a software developer needs to do to join us is buy four suits they are going to be put off. We changed our dress code a week later.

8/ Matt on security: Denial of service is a big deal for us; Cyber Crime is number 1 on our corporate risk register. The answer is to invest in people – you can’t play at these things.

9/ Bob: The most important thing in our business is service. I’ve got systems that are keeping people alive. My digital agenda needs to always work.

Five things we learnt

1/ The CIO role is changing (fundamentally):

• The old operational priorities of cost saving and infrastructure are declining, and new outward facing ones are increasing – such as revenue growth and digital
• Connected to this more CIOs report directly to the CEO (34 percent) than at any time in the past decade, rising 10 percent over the last year
• This increase in importance has come about as the CIO is becoming more focused on non-IT activity. Four in ten CIOs now spend more than one day a week in areas entirely unrelated to traditional IT.

2/ Skills shortage grows, but good news on gender diversity

• Despite CIOs being more creative and increasing their influence, they still are being hindered by the greatest technology skills shortage since the Great Recession almost a decade ago.
• Almost two-thirds (65 percent) of CIOs say they believe a lack of talent will prevent their organization from keeping up with the pace of change, a 10 percent increase in just 12 months
• Eleven percent of survey respondents were female, up from 8 percent last year and the first time in the survey’s history women made up more than one in ten participants. Women in the top CIO role has risen by a third – up from 6 to 9 percent.

3/ Cyber security – One in three global CIOs responded to cyber-attacks in the last two years

• Almost one in three (28 percent) of CIOs have had to respond to a major IT security or cyber-attack on behalf of their organization in the last two years
• Almost half of CIOs (49 percent) report data loss and privacy risks as the biggest challenge with adopting cloud technology
• Only a fifth (22 percent) of CIOs feel confident their organization is very well prepared to identify and respond to cyber-attacks compared to nearly a third in 2014

4/ CIOs are getting to grips with digital

• Almost one in ten companies implemented an enterprise wide digital strategy (jumping from 27% to 35%)
• Alongside this growth in strategy comes a growth in importance: the single most likely body to own the digital strategy is the Board. IT comes second. It’s worth noting here that Marketing, perhaps the traditional sparring partner of the CIO in digital, is now close to the bottom. As companies develop a clearer understanding of what digital means for their business and as such the old confusions between digital business, digital marketing are resolved.

5/ CIOs increasing agility

• Big jumps are planned in cloud investment
• 59 per cent of organisations looking to implement agile methods to develop and deliver IT services
• For the Creative CIO, the goal is to simplify organisational structures to successfully to deliver both a more agile and innovative business environment and a more engaging customer experience.

Thank you to everyone who took part, and who continue to make the CIO Survey events a great way to share knowledge and insights. If you would like to find out more about Harvey Nash please visit www.harveynash.co.uk, or contact michelle.smith@harveynash.com. If you would like to find out more about KPMG please visit http://www.kpmginfo.com/cioagenda/ or contact Catherine.sanders@kpmg.com