The CMO and CFO 'are Shadow CIOs', argue Lloyd's and ex-American Airlines CIOs

But speaking at Bloomberg Enterprise Technology Summit, they argued that the role of the CIO still remains important, especially when managing risk

Chief marking officers and chief financial officers are essentially shadow chief information officers, but the CIO is still an important figure in the enterprise, especially if there's a technology-related issue.

That was the view of two high-profile CIOs on a panel at Bloomberg Enterprise Technology Summit at Vinopolis, London. Peter Hambling, CIO at insurance market Lloyd's of London, and Monte Ford, former CIO for American Airlines and current director of cloud services company Akamai, made the comments while discussing risk, the CIO and the board.

Ford told the audience that the rise of the CFO or CMO as a shadow CIO has been largely a result of CIOs enabling these individuals to exercise a certain amount of control over technology within the business.

"CIOs created much of this ourselves. What we did was we allowed people to bring their own devices to work, we allowed the investment into technology, bought into small, innovative companies and all of those things," said Ford.

"But all of those things have come home to roost, because the CMO is a shadow CIO, the CFO is a shadow CIO," he added.

Hambling agreed, and compared the situation to the rise of the PC in the workplace.

"We've seen this before, we've seen this on many occasions, when there was the emergence of the PC, suddenly there was a whole wealth of experts coming out of university and they thought they could do enterprise computing. This is something we've already seen," he said.

Hambling argued that there are now so many "experts" within the enterprise, that there's not really anybody left to exert control over.

"And we're now seeing chief digital officers, chief marketing officers, chief data officers, chief data scientists; in fact there are so many chiefs out there I don't think there are any Indians left for them," he said.

Nonetheless, the CIO still has an important role in the business, said Ford, who argued that when the subject of IT-related risk is brought up, it's the CIO who ultimately holds responsibility for bringing it to the attention of the corporate board.

"For somebody like a chief marketing officer, does the risk lie with them, or does it lie with the chief information officer?" Ford asked. "CIOs have to step into the role of managing that risk."

Lloyd's of London CIO Hambling pointed to how the role of the CIO has changed as technology has changed and different departments of the enterprise have started to exert more control, arguing that the CIO is the person who is called on when technology goes wrong.

"In the changing role of the CIO, if I go back 20 years, my role was one of control. But now, as we've said, there's many chiefs and many people. I provide services between the gaps of where they sit and more often than not, we get involved when things go wrong. Because actually when things work perfectly, we don't need to do too much," he said.

"But when something goes wrong, that's when we come to fore," Hambling added.

This isn't the first time it's been suggested that the CMO is breathing down the neck of the CIO. Speaking earlier this year, Tibco CTO Matt Quinn suggested the Internet of Things and the increasing number of web-integrated devices that comes with it will eventually see control of enterprise technology - particularly big data and analytical tools - shift away from the CIO and towards the chief marketing officer of the organisation.