2022: The Rise of the Strategic CIO
Learn to move from the back room to the boardroom
The role of the CIO in 2022 and beyond
Are you part of the 80% of CIO’s that are not an equal partner in business strategy? Are you in the bottom 35% of CIO’s that are tasked with implementing strategy, but are not given a seat at the top table when making strategic decisions? It sucks, doesn’t it?
How do you make this switch? You’ve got to leverage recent successes to change this situation.Â
Start by demonstrating your value. Gartner research shows that the top performing firms engage their CIO in strategic decision making 57% of the time. You have to demonstrate the clear value IT leadership brings in the digital age, and demand a seat at the top table.
The challenge that you face here is the pace of digital acceleration.Â
The pandemic has forced companies through 7 years’ worth of digital transformation in just 12 months… rapidly evolving the employee and customer digital touchpoints in ways that were unimaginable just 2 years ago.
Leveraging the successes during the pandemic
Like others, you’ve probably had to mobilise your team at short-notice to quickly ensure business continuity during times of unprecedented disruption.
Building upon these successes, it’s time to lead from the front during normal times.
One advantage you have from the pandemic is that the pace of digital change has thrust your team into the forefront. You have had to get far more engaged with Customers, Employees and Suppliers to ensure the new digital channels work seamlessly.
This means you are now ideally placed to leverage these new skills to drive business performance in the future.
The question is: how?
Is your organisation struggling with the following?
Cybersecurity threats
Customer duplicates
Dirty data
Missing data documentation
Failed AI projects
Project cost and time overruns
Slow executive decision making
Data protection laws
If you’re like the other CIOs we help, these challenges have made the digital transformation even harder. However this is not just a challenge for the CIO. The dirty data flowing through your systems hurts the business just as much as it hurts I.T.
To fix this we need a data strategy so you can barge your way into the boardroom and demand change.
Taking ownership of data strategy
In order for you to move from the backroom to the boardroom, it’s now more essential than ever that you put a proper data strategy in place.
Cognopia’s 2021 data maturity research demonstrated that just 2% of firms have a data strategy that’s aligned against their corporate strategy.
The challenge the you must overcome is to ensure digital transformation, and the data that powers digital transformation, is aligned against the corporate vision, mission and strategy.
No other C-suite leader has the end-to-end visibility of the data architecture to be able to drive value through data strategy.
You’re uniquely positioned to shine.
How proper training helps you move forward
Only target data with business value
Quantify the value you deliver
Focus on critical business decisions
Establish proper governance
Unlock budgets for your ideas
Take control of data strategy
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Bridging the strategy gap between business and IT
In order to bridge the gap, you have to leverage your deep understanding of data, technology, and IT trends and marry it with the strategic ambitions of the business.
This is no small feat. If you’re like other CIOs, you probably waste upwards of 60% of your budget “keeping the lights on”.
In order to drive up innovation and value for the business, you must make the case for this to change.
Our work has shown that you can bridge this gap by carefully collaborating with the CEO, unpicking the corporate objectives, and prioritising the digital and data agenda against core business challenges: increasing revenues, cutting costs or reducing risks.
Data monetisation - your best kept secret
In order to tackle the core business challenges, you need to learn new skills to put a proper value on the data flowing through your technology landscape.
There’s simply too much data today to improve everything at once. As a result you must learn how to put a dollar value on core enterprise data. This will ensure the I.T. team can guide the business and improve areas with hard and soft dollar values.Â
How you can monetise your data
Increase revenues
Reduce costs
Boost cash flow
Remove risks
Data monetisation is not just about selling data to create new revenue streams. The leaders in this space know that data monetisation can help drive up revenues (without selling the data), cut costs and waste from business processes, unlock free cash flows to improve EBITDA and reduce the risk of cybersecurity costs and regulatory penalties.
By prioritising the data strategy against business ambitions and clear dollar values, you can leverage your unique vantage point to dramatically transform business performance.
Data maturity vs the ability to place value on data
Our 2021 research demonstrated the value of a solid business case on enterprise data maturity. When bad business cases are present, firms are only able to leverage data for simple business outcomes – recording transactions, reporting sales etc, and often with lots of waste and rework.
Firms that can place both hard and soft dollar values on their data scored 35% higher on our data maturity assessments.
A company with a market capitalisation of $10 Bn USD can increase the value of their data by over half a billion dollars if they can make such a leap in data maturity.No business case
Good business case
How to improve data maturity
Identify your biggest challenge
Put dollar values on fixing it
Set guiding principles around data
Coordinate actions to overcome the challenge

Executing data strategy - your new data target operating model
With the data strategy supporting your corporate strategy and objectives, you now need to execute on the promise. Here’s how:
- Focus on the data crown jewels – the most valuable data
- Demand business accountability for data governance rules and policies
- Get executive sponsorship from the business – ideally your CEO
- Build a data management team to support the business ambition
- Prove your value to sustain change across the organisation
- Ensure everything is aligned to your corporate organisation model
This is a long-term change, make sure you have the skills, sponsorship and support to deliver it.
It's your time to rise - grab it with both hands!
The pandemic has created a unique opportunity for you to move from the backroom to the boardroom.Â
By taking control of enterprise data strategy, you can leverage your superior knowledge of customer behaviours, digital business models, and employee expectations to drive lasting change for your firm.
To make the most of this opportunity, you need to ensure you have the right skills in the right roles.
Developing data skills
Unfortunately, finding the right talent has never been harder. As a result, you need to develop your existing internal capabilities more than ever before.
In order to bridge the gap between technology and business, we need to ensure that your team can speak the language of the business.
Cognopia has developed a series of training courses specifically designed to teach the skills laid out in this article.
Our data courses:
Fail-proof data valuation techniques: monetise your information assets
To justify investments in data and analytics you need to put hard and soft dollar values on enterprise data assets.
Just 399 USD
Get your funding flowing
We teach 7 fail-proof data valuation techniques you can immediately deploy to get the funding you need
This course includes:
✔ 195 page e-book
✔ Data valuation calculator
✔ 19 lessons
✔ 35 topics
✔ 8 quizzes
✔ Course certificate
How to Create Ironclad Data Strategy your Execs can't Ignore
A data strategy is essential if you want to unlock the full value of your data. Join the top 2% of firms that can use data to drive business performance in this 2 hour long course.
Just 379 USD
How to align business strategy with data strategy
If you want to succeed you need a data strategy framework that shows where data drives business outcomes.
This course includes:
✔ 154 page e-book
✔ 11 lessons
✔ 30 topics
✔ Data strategy templates
✔ Course certificate
6 Easy Steps to Win at Data Governance
Learn how and why data governance drives better business performance in this 1 hour, 35 minute long course.
It's practical, straightforward, and immediately delivers value
Just 279 USD
Practical content so you know where to begin
Learn to manage the data that drives business performance, and how to build a data governance framework fit for your business.
This course includes:
✔ 116 page e-book
✔ 14 lessons
✔ 23 topics
✔ 5 quizzes
✔ Course certificate
Join students from:








Questions:
Our courses are designed to be practical, not theoretical. We leverage business-led frameworks such as the business model canvas, value proposition canvas and decision intelligence canvasses to teach how to align data strategy with business strategy.
There are similarities with the DCAM approach, but this site is not affiliated with DCAM or DMBOK.
CIMP offers a range of training and certification. All Cognopia instructors hold either CIMP or CIMP Ex certification.
The CIMP education packages offer great content to understand the theory and history of data management. Cognopia courses focus on practical application of the course material – getting out of the classroom using real-world examples from companies you recognise.
CDMP is a certification from the DAMA organisation. Their exams test the knowledge of the DAMA DMBoK (volume 2). CDMP certification also requires industry experience.
Cognopia courses are designed for data management professionals of all levels. We teach practical techniques to improve your data and the value your organisation can get from its data.
In our experience, students need more than theory. Our training helps data people speak the language of the business, driving up engagement and getting executive sponsorship.
If you are banging your head against a brick wall trying to get the business to understand your work, these courses are for you.
Yes, we welcome team enrollments and can offer compelling dicsounts to larger groups.
Please email [email protected] to discuss your requirements.
You’ll be immediately logged into our online training academy dashboard. From here, you can begin your training.
You’ll have lifetime access to the Cognopia Academy as long as the subscription is active. Customers tell us they save time using the Academy vs endless searching for answers on Google.
You can purchase access to just one course, but we believe that there’s a need to learn continuously. Our Academy is designed to help you learn and apply what you learn. A subscription model help you to do this.
Absolutely. Many clients prefer a mix of self-study and live, online training. However we can arrange for face to face training if required.
Please email [email protected] to discuss your requirements.
Buy more and save:
Our courses are designed to complement one another. Once you understand Data Governance, you’ll want to build a winning Data Strategy and use our Data Valuation techniques to justify your funding request.Â
Click on the option that best suits your learning needs and budget:
2022: The Rise of the Strategic CIO
Learn to move from the back room to the boardroom
Leverage the hard work of the past few years. Develop new skills for you and your team. Advance your career and save 10% through December 31st using code “Gimme10”
- 9.2 star satisfaction rating
- Direct intrsuctor assistance
- Quality guaranteed