You know those ERP systems, Excel spreadsheets, and specialized point solutions the business still depends on? As a CIO who is being asked to do more than just manage IT, they’re no longer enough. They limit you to being reactive, at a time when you’re expected to play a leading role in enabling the enterprise to adapt and grow.
In Foundry’s 2025 State of the CIO survey, 81% of CIOs agreed that their role has become one of a changemaker, increasingly leading business and technology initiatives. Half of them now identify as business leaders.
A CIO’s role now extends far beyond operational responsibilities. You’re still expected to drive digital transformation and protect the enterprise from security threats — but you’re also required to influence, shape, and execute enterprise strategy. This is especially true as we move towards the era of the AI-driven business.
A new mandate
Boards and CEOs now count on CIOs to prepare the organization for change, not only responding to disruption but anticipating it. They’re looking to you to facilitate smarter planning and provisioning, for instance by embedding predictive and generative intelligence into everyday decision-making across the business.
Executives want real-time, accurate business insights that are rooted in a single, trusted source of truth. As a CIO, you must evolve from data custodian to data strategist.
You’re being held back
All too often, the strategic priorities of a CIO pull you in different directions.
- You must balance speed of execution with demands for governance, compliance, and explainability.
- You are expected to deliver innovation while optimizing costs and keeping budgets in check.
- You must continue to modernize IT and accelerate digital initiatives without exposing the organization to risk.
- You need to handle AI adoption rapidly, and responsibly.
But there are obstacles that hinder your ability to meet these strategic demands: reliance on old solutions and processes, a lack of enterprise alignment, disconnected data, and scarcity of talent.
Legacy tools and disconnected systems weren’t built to support you in a more strategic role. In fact, they’re holding you back, keeping you reactive instead of proactive.
Elevating the CIO as a business leader
Shaping and executing growth strategies demands real-time data, predictive insights, and optimized resources. Without the right foundation, agile and continuous planning is rendered almost impossible. Meanwhile, AI initiatives can easily become costly experiments — eroding trust instead of creating real, measurable value.
This is why forward-looking CIOs are moving beyond existing technology solutions.
What’s missing is an intelligent decision-making platform that unifies diverse data across core systems and transforms it into real-time insights. These insights facilitate more proactive IT operations by granting CIOs a view of how the enterprise truly operates. From there, you can identify opportunities for growth and cost cutting and rapidly translate strategic priorities into action.
Anaplan helps CIOs to deliver measurable impact. It unifies planning data and workflows to enable real-time collaboration and align execution across the enterprise. Finance, sales, supply chain, HR, and operations teams can all work from the same live data, test scenarios together, and quickly reach consensus on the best path forward.
Governance is strengthened through embedded frameworks to provide assurance that the insights delivered are credible and can be acted upon with confidence.
Trusted AI drives forward-looking decisions
Anaplan integrates predictive and generative AI directly into enterprise planning workflows, securely and transparently. The platform automates and optimizes routine planning cycles, allowing you to run multidimensional "what-if" scenarios, manage risk, and strengthen business resilience at scale.
As your focus areas expand beyond IT infrastructure, and enterprise data becomes an increasingly crucial strategic asset, you must act as a partner in the organization’s key decisions. Outdated planning tools and technologies are impeding your ability to take on a strategic leadership role.
Anaplan drives faster, more confident decisions across the whole enterprise, keeping the business agile and aligned in the execution of strategic priorities. CIOs achieve:
- Faster integration of diverse data sources
- Trusted AI that drives forward-looking decisions
- Fewer vulnerabilities and greater resilience
- A workforce empowered to act with confidence
With Anaplan you replace fragmented data and planning with a single decision-making layer. It’s a platform that simplifies complexity, funds innovation, and elevates the CIO as a business leader.
