CIOs are increasingly sharing responsibilities with other C-suite leaders focused on data, analytics and artificial intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported.
About 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have a data-focused executive at the chief level or just below, Ryan Bulkoski, global head of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles' data, analytics and AI practice, told the news outlet. A 2022 Heidrick & Struggles survey of 120 of those types of executives found the roles had existed for less than five years.
The new executives often report directly to CEOs and are brought on to take some of the data burden off CIOs and chief technology officers and give a specialized perspective to company boards, according to the April 14 story.
But it's not always a seamless transition. "There's always going to be some kind of friction that’s happening," Dak Liyanearachchi, NRG Energy's chief data and technology officer, told the Journal. "The teams around you are going, 'Well, I do some of that,' or 'Why are you telling me how I should be thinking about doing things differently?'"
And chief data officers sometimes don't last in their roles for long. "I've seen expectations with data and machine learning and analytics in general be difficult to live up to in the timelines and level of investments that are prescribed to it," Ameen Kazerouni, chief data, analytics and technology officer for Orangetheory Fitness, told the newspaper.