Is the day of the CDO over? Two-thirds of businesses don't have a CDO - and most don't want one
Numbers have increased in recent years, but demand is tailing off, suggests KPMG survey
More than two-thirds of organisations don't have a chief digital officer (CDO) or equivalent - and the majority don't want one, either.
That's according to the 2017 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey, which found that 69 per cent of organisations do without a CDO and had no intention of hiring one.
Only one-quarter of organisations have a CDO or equivalent in place already, and their number is rising only slowly. And only six per cent of respondents without a CDO claimed that they planned to hire one.
Between 2015 and 2016 there was only a one per cent rise in the number of CDOs, suggesting that the popularity of the CDO role, and of organisations believing they needed a 'digital leader' to help them transform, has reached a peak. However, there are now three times as many CDOs around as there were three years ago.
The survey found that more than half of large companies have a CDO in post - more than twice the average. But only one-fifth of those with IT budgets of less than $50m have taken the plunge to hire a digital leader.
"We think that large organisations recognise the need to co-ordinate digital activities across the enterprise to avoid duplication, leverage skills and experience, and exploit synergies," the report reads.
"Smaller companies, on the other hand, are much less formalised in their approach. Barely one-in-five have appointed a CDO. We suspect that they rely on their inherent nimbleness to address their digital challenges," it states.
A wide range of industry sectors saw rapid growth in CDO hiring over the past 12 months. This included sectors where the actual number of CDOs are relatively low. For example, there were big year-on-year jumps in utilities (11 per cent to 16 per cent), education (nine per cent to 18 per cent), energy (11 per cent to 18 per cent) and manufacturing (11 per cent to 18 per cent).
In many respects, it depends on what an organisation wants or needs from a CDO. At electronics giant Philips, CDO Blake Cahill helped to unify the organisation's marketing focus, saving money and effort in the process, while sharpening the company's marketing edge.
The biggest jump was in the broadcast and media sector, which had only 30 per cent of organisations with a CDO in 2016, but nearly half (46 per cent) in 2017. But there were also some industries which saw a fall in the number of CDOs - pharmaceuticals and the charity sector saw two per cent drops, while advertising saw a big fall from 43 per cent to 35 per cent.
Not all media CIOs or CTOs also want to share the platform with a CDO. News UK CTO Christina Scott, for example, told Computing in December 2016 that her organisation had no need of a CDO.