In this final installment of our blog series, we look ahead at emerging trends for the Office of the CIO (OCIO) and share practical ways your organization can achieve sustainable transformation.
Our first blog, “Five strategic reasons to establish an Office of the CIO,” examined why the OCIO is critical to delivering measurable business value, while our second, “Bridging strategy and execution: Overcoming OCIO challenges to deliver real business value,” outlined practical ways to overcome common challenges.
Now, let’s explore how the OCIO can define your organization's digital future.
Turning business and IT alignment into strategic impact
Once established, OCIOs become increasingly strategic, shaping not only an organization’s technology roadmap but also overall business direction. According to our 2025 CGI Voice of Our Clients research, 65% of digital leaders highly align business and IT operations to support strategy, compared to just 38% of those still building or launching their digitization strategies. The OCIO’s ability to align digital initiatives directly with business strategy will increasingly determine organizational success. New operating models, including agile at scale and product-centric delivery, further accelerate this alignment.
What does this mean for your organization? These models enable OCIOs to seamlessly integrate IT and business teams, allowing you to prioritize technology initiatives based on measurable business impact. To fulfill this strategic promise, organizations are expanding beyond traditional technical expertise to build a deep understanding of business dynamics. This broader perspective ensures technology investments drive meaningful outcomes and align stakeholders around a shared vision.
IT is evolving from a back-office function into a front-line strategic partner. Its agile, innovative and user-focused approach sets the tone for other business units, demonstrating how new ways of working can deliver enterprise-wide value. Supported by organizational alignment, real change happens when technology becomes a spark for growth.
The OCIO digital transformation advantage
Effective digital transformation goes beyond adopting new technologies—it’s about ensuring these technologies align with your organization's strategic priorities and deliver tangible results. When the OCIO bridges technology and business objectives, your organization can respond proactively to emerging opportunities.
From faster market entry to stronger customer experiences and cost savings, the OCIO serves as a strategic driver to ensure innovations such as AI, IoT, blockchain, and other emerging technologies deliver measurable business outcomes. Let’s take a closer look at one of the biggest drivers of this evolution: AI and automation.
From efficiency to innovation
The OCIO’s strategic role in embedding AI and automation across business processes is vital, not only for operational efficiency but to propel innovation and growth. AI and automation are rapidly becoming indispensable to OCIO activities. Based on our 2025 Voice of Our Clients research, enhancing operational efficiency through automation and process optimization ranks as the top business priority for organizations in 2025.
By embedding AI and automation across both IT and broader enterprise processes, OCIOs can deliver smarter, data-driven insights and enhance portfolio management. These technologies streamline repetitive tasks, freeing teams to focus on strategic planning and proactive change management.
The next evolution: Agentic AI as a strategic orchestrator
Agentic AI represents a fundamental shift beyond traditional automation. These intelligent, semi-autonomous systems can perceive, decide and act independently toward defined goals. Unlike rule-based automation, agentic AI orchestrates complex workflows by dynamically reasoning through problems, coordinating across multiple systems, and adapting in real-time to changing conditions. For OCIOs, this unlocks the ability to scale strategic initiatives beyond human capacity limitations, while maintaining responsible governance through built-in transparency and human oversight.
Looking ahead: The evolution of the OCIO
The OCIO is evolving into a strategic hub that moves beyond traditional IT management to play a central role in enterprise leadership. OCIOs that align with business strategy and responsibly apply technologies such as agentic AI and automation will be in the best position to seize new opportunities and address complex challenges.
In this role, the OCIO helps leaders confidently navigate technological change, growing cybersecurity demands, financial pressures, and evolving regulations. Ultimately, organizations empowering their OCIO to bridge technology and strategy will lead in tomorrow’s dynamic digital landscape.
Success stories: Establishing strategic OCIOs
Let's look at real-world examples of what is possible when OCIOs evolve from managing technology to driving transformation.
A global leader in corporate catering: A world-class transformation
Working closely with a global corporate catering group, we helped them establish a CIO Transformation Office that elevated their operations into a world-class IT organization. During a three-year transformation program, the client achieved:
- 25% reduction in global IT project timelines, accelerating innovation cycles and time-to-market for new digital services
- 15% decrease in operational costs—achieved through enhanced global collaboration, agile practices, and strategic alignment across IT and business teams
Luxury cosmetics client: Enhancing customer experience and visibility
We partnered with a global cosmetics leader to drive its IT transformation by aligning technology strategy with business priorities, implementing performance governance, and fostering a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing, resulting in:
- Higher customer satisfaction scores through streamlined digital processes and customer-centric technology solutions
- 40% improvement in project portfolio visibility by clearly linking IT investments directly to strategic business priorities and outcomes
Future-proofing your OCIO
The OCIO of the future will go beyond IT management to become a driver of strategic business leadership. As organizations navigate rapid technological change, growing cybersecurity demands, shifting regulations, and dynamic markets, the OCIO’s role is becoming increasingly critical. By aligning digital strategy with business outcomes, embedding emerging technologies like AI and automation, and positioning itself as an innovation accelerator, your OCIO can deliver measurable results that truly future-proof your organization.
We partner closely with organizations worldwide to build and evolve future-ready OCIOs. If you would like to explore your OCIO’s long-term potential, please connect with us—Lara Ozanne and Christophe Malvestio.
We invite you to learn more about how OCIOs can propel innovation and value for your organization:
About these authors
Lara Ozanne
Director Business Consulting - France
Lara co-leads CGI’s CIO Advisory and Digital Leadership business consulting service. She also drives the development of IT consulting practices and business solutions for CGI’s Financial Services sector in Paris.
Christophe Malvestio
Vice-President, Business Consulting
Christophe is a seasoned professional with over 28 years of experience, dedicated to enhancing the impact of CIO and IT departments on business performance across industries.
