CIOs have never been under more pressure.

AI has captured the attention of boards and executives unlike anything we have seen before. Business leaders are demanding their IT teams press ahead with ‘making AI work’ for their business and the weight of expectations is falling on CIO’s shoulders.

Given the urgency with which executives are mandating AI, you’d think IT teams would be given budget and resources commensurate with the gravity of their requests.

If you’ve ever worked in IT, particularly if you’ve ever been a CIO, you’d know little – if any – additional resources are being allocated to the task.

Put yourselves in the shoes of a CIO. Under immense pressure from the board, resources already stretched to capacity, how does one show progress in something as transformational as adopting AI?

You implement a chatbot.

This earns you plaudits from executives but, in reality, it is just a parlour trick.

Unfortunately, given limited budgets and personnel, it is the lowest hanging fruit that gets ticked off first when chasing the AI dragon.

But does it really provide business value?

What if there was another approach to implementing AI?

One that gave CIOs more bandwidth to truly move the needle for their organisation.

Going back to go forward

It makes sense that CIOs are looking to demonstrate quick AI wins given the Sisyphean task they’ve been handed.

But after the chatbot’s hype has died down, the IT leader is back to square one – limited budget, limited personnel, and near limitless pressure.

Rather than going forward – looking to implement something customer or employee facing – by going ‘back’, it is possible to truly set the stage for AI transformation.

IT teams spend the majority of their time and resources on ‘keeping the lights on’.

This means maintaining the infrastructure, networks, and devices that allow a business to do what it does.

It’s a thankless job, but it’s non-negotiable – emails need to be sent, payments need to be received, online stores need to be online.

The people dedicated to this task cannot be taken away lest things come crashing down and the organisation starts spiking on ‘Down Detector’.

Or can they?

AI’s promise is that it removes the burden of monotonous, manual tasks.

Keeping IT infrastructure online is critical, but many of the tasks involved are deterministic – if x then y, when a then b.

These are exactly the kind of tasks that AI is made to handle.

While it might not be as flashy as a chatbot, implementing AI to automate infrastructure maintenance and operations can free a CIO’s hand to innovate and bring AI into the organisation at large.

More time for transformation, money for modernisation

By putting the day-to-day needs of the IT infrastructure on autopilot, CIOs can unlock their two greatest assets – people and budget.

Highly skilled technical engineers, who are in extremely short supply across the region, can now be upskilled in the capabilities required to bring AI to life.

This overcomes one of the most glaring challenges local organisations face when transforming their organisation – finding and recruiting the technical talent to do so.

Existing engineers know the organisation, they understand the business needs, and have the technical knowledge needed to excel in AI.

Rather than having them spend 80 per cent (or more) of their time on low-value tasks, they can be redeployed towards what is arguably the most important IT project any organisation has embarked on in the last 25 years – adopting and implementing AI.

Doing more with less

In my recent conversations with CIOs and executive IT leaders, the same themes repeat.

Many say they’re dealing with budgets stretched to capacity just maintaining business as usual.

They simply don’t have the budget or adequate support to focus on the innovation and growth required to adopt AI, yet they’re the ones responsible for it.

Automating the ‘business as usual’ infrastructure operations can tip the scales in their favour.

By reducing the operational costs and manual interventions required to keep the business functioning, CIOs can free their IT teams to innovate faster, build AI use cases, and implement AI in ways that go far beyond a few API calls delivered as a chatbot.

Another option, of course, is that businesses and boards give the CIO and their teams the budget and resources required to deliver on their AI demands.

But, if my 40 years in IT is any guide, I’d say it’s prudent to have an alternative plan.