Technology changes fast and tech jobs are changing just as rapidly, according to Belinda Finch, CIO . Finch joined IFS late last year from mobile company Three, where she led Three’s digital transformation and helped to drive system developments to support customer experience as CIO. She has also held senior leadership roles at Centrica and Vodafone, as well as at Accenture and KPMG.
As the CIO at IFS, and is responsible for overseeing IFS’s digital transformation and the adoption of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) to drive productivity and efficiency. In an interview with Computer Weekly, Finch explains how the role of the IT organisation and the CIO are both evolving rapidy. “My view now on the CIO is that you can’t be the CIO of the past if you want to enable your business to move forward.
Technology is everywhere, it doesn’t matter what business you are in, so the CIO has to sit in the centre of the organisation, not as this supplier back-office function,” she says. “That’s what I got brought in to do at IFS, which is to enable the business with our internal IT to grow and scale.” That means the time of the more traditional CIO, who is only involved with internal IT delivery, is limited.
It is a role that might not even exist a decade from now, Finch admits. “In 10 years’ time, I don’t think a traditional CIO needs to exist at all, and the CIO [will be] much focused on business strategy and business enablement than it is on your tra.
