娇色导航

Welcome to 娇色导航Leadership Live. I'm Lee Renick, Executive Director of 娇色导航Communities for CIO, and I'm here on site at the 娇色导航Awards & Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. And I am thrilled today.

This is the first time we've met in person, but I'm thrilled today to welcome Laurie Buczek, who's the group VP executive of insights and leadership services at IDC.

It's so nice to meet you in person. Yeah, I know, just so great. So thank you so much for joining us today. I thought we might kick off by just, you know, you telling me a little bit about your role at IDC and maybe.

Yeah, just talk about that a little bit and what you're doing. Sure. So IDC has services from research as well as other services targeting vendors in the tech world, but also the buyers of technology as well too.

And on the buyers of technology side, we're really honing in on what things do CIOs need.

And so our portfolio of products include research from our analysts, but also a lot of data services, from doing pricing and cost comparison, vendor comparisons, and also the council experience, which is building a network and sharing best practices with peers.

And then we also have pathways, which is leadership development services.

So executive coaching from former CIOs to help you through some of the top leadership challenges at the time. All that packaged together is what we bring forward for the CIOs, and it's amazing that we've had the opportunity to work together.

In fact, we hosted a panel for Women in Tech, which was phenomenal with tech leaders from around North America.

And, you know, we've had the opportunity to talk about, what the, IDC, CIO, Executive Council is. So maybe you could just walk us through a little bit about what it is, how you're supporting the CIOs in their tech and leadership journey.

The 娇色导航Executive Council has been around for several years, and it's really gone through a little bit of an evolution, and we're working on enhancing those services to really make sure that we're bolstering and modernizing the things that CIOs need today.

So, the peer networking is a really critical part, making sure that you are able as a CIO, you're able to come around a round table, in a trusted, confidential setting to be able to have honest conversations about what's top of mind, what's working, what do you what do you see for vendors?

You know, playing a particular space as well as we do some interactive webinars, very short, 30 minute, topically focused, agenda items where, it's interactive, but we'll bring in an analyst, a fellow member to speak on that particular topic.

We also have a great partnership as you mentioned. Leave with you all on the foundry side. So members also have a unique opportunity to elevate their professional profile by participating in CIO, leadership live, webinars as well as the IOC's articles.

And also we're doing points of view from an IDC standpoint of, what does the council, believe and, advocate and their point of view for particular topics on the IDC side of the House as well too? Yeah.

So it's a really comprehensive way a 娇色导航can really get that extra leadership support with some of the challenges they're facing on a regular basis. But then have that opportunity to build their own personal brand, which I think is so important.

And I've had a chance to interview some of our members, and it's been so insightful, so phenomenal.

And many of them, by the way, are winners of the CIO, their projects, or we have the 娇色导航100 award. So it's really, really an amazing opportunity to network, learn. But also build your brand. Correct. Is that would you would say the council provides? Absolutely.

What we hear from CIOs, what they value is we get the the combination of we sprinkle on a little bit of IDC research.

So you have the subject matter experts who are looking at the market, looking at the application, looking at the industries that are able to come in as well as their peers, that great mixology together, they think is highly valuable.

And then the cherry on top is the partnership that we have with foundry so that they can tell their leadership stories or their digital transformation stories, and that is really important.

So they want to be seen as elevating the profession of it. And so all of this together allows them to be able to do that. Yeah. And then there's one other ingredient in the secret sauce of the IDC Executive Council. And that is networking.

So and I'm getting goosebumps talking about it because it's such an important part of what you do.

And I've been there to see it in action. It's so important for those CIO. So maybe you can tell me a little bit about it. What are you doing? You have something coming up today don't you.

Do we do we have a member meeting a for gathering for about 2.5 hours. And, this is again, roundtable style.

We sprinkle in, some latest research, things that we're finding from an analyst standpoint, coupled with a lot of discussion around the table.

And so we're tackling things like I where the role of the 娇色导航and it is heading, which we're hearing that is changing pretty dramatically with it shifting more into a strategic, yeah, yeah. Position to drive the business with technology enabling it.

So we're going to mix all, you know, talk about a lot of those things. And but the CIOs love it because first of all it's a safe space. It's vendor free Chatham House rules Chatham House rules. So you're able to talk about it.

And, we had a dinner before directions in the spring, and they were joking at the end of the dinner that this is almost like a therapy session.

And I think folks really appreciate that. They know that they're not alone. They're able to learn some really interesting nuggets from peers. They expand their networks so they can phone a friend. Yeah, if they need to. That is highly valuable. Yeah, it really is.

And that's what I'm hearing too, definitely from the people that are participating in from the 娇色导航to that this time, right now is such a great time for them to be together, to talk, to network and share. So that's amazing.

All right. So we're asking most of the people we interview here today what's top of mind for your members or CIOs. Maybe if you want to sprinkle in any predictions for 2025. Oh, that one was impressive, but I thought I would ask anyway.

Yeah, well, of course AI is a really, really big topic, and rightly so.

It's not a it's not a fad. It's not something that's going to go to the wayside like the metaverse, kind of died on the vine. And so CIOs, it's coming up a lot.

And it's not just from the things that they need to do to support their business partners and particularly external customer experience opportunities. It's also internally, heavy, heavy, focus on use cases and productivity right now.

The thing that we're talking a lot about is that they're kind of stuck in POC jail, and how are they thinking about getting out of that and starting to get into production and implementation?

With a lot of this, there's a lot of pressure from the C-suite and the board of directors down, and that is not letting up at all.

In fact, they're saying it's increasing in order to really focus on improving the productivity and the business's ability to be able to achieve their objectives. So of course, that is top of mind.

The other thing we're hearing a lot is that, I.T in general is actually being asked to really get back to understanding the business. Now, we have talked about this for quite some time of it needs to be a strategic business partner.

But the reality is that it was very hard for for it actually to be accomplished. And some of the line of businesses actually took, you know, ownership and accountability for doing their own technology, particularly on the customer facing side that. Yes.

Now IT and the 娇色导航are being asked to come back in. And really the, the the role is being elevated to be more the business leader of driving digital transformation across the company.

Consolidate down a lot of these applications that are running amok throughout the businesses and really get streamline, particularly with AI coming in and the need to get control over data that is across all these different databases across the company. So that's a big shift.

And so there's a lot of questions about, well, what does that mean.

Does that mean that the 娇色导航really becomes the the CTO the chief AI officer, the chief security officer, the chief data officer, or does that start to break down into, you know, several C's along the way?

So that's a big conversation topic as well too. Wow. And it's so we just interviewed Marcy Maddox is one of our, IDC researchers. And she was talking just exactly about this. So great conversation today. Great predictions for 2025 around the role of the CIO.

And, what we'll do is we'll make sure we include a link to, the IDC Executive Council in our post here.

So if you want more information, you can reach out and we'll make sure we share that with you. Thanks so much, Lori, for joining us today. I look forward to speaking it on your event later on today.

And just hearing that some of the CIOs were saying, I really appreciate all the work you do. Thank you. So likewise. Thank you.

It's a pleasure.