The chief information officer role has evolved at companies across Central Iowa, including at Casey’s General Stores. The convenience store chain did not have a CIO role until 2020, said Sanjeev Satturu, senior vice president and chief information officer at Casey’s. 

“The CIO role was more like a back office role,” Satturu said. “They didn’t even have a seat at the table of the senior leadership team, and they were more like a technology guardian. They were responsible to guard technology, to deploy some hardware so that the stores can run.”

In the last five years, the position has become more like a business innovator, “where we enable growth, we enable efficiencies in the whole enterprise,” he said.

The status of CIOs, CTOs and other tech leaders is rising as they are increasingly asked to do more, scaling new technology across organizations and serving as change agents who are expected to be involved in business strategy.

At the recent Prometheus Awards celebration, gathering tech leaders from around Iowa, Technology Association of Iowa President Brian Waller said IT is no longer in the “back office.”

“Technology is in the boardroom,” he said. “It’s driving strategy, and it’s the cornerstone of Iowa’s growth.”

John Gaspari, senior vice president of IT at Wright Service Corp., an environmental services provider based in West Des Moines, said IT is no longer a bunch of “geeks in the dark room with the flashing lights and the humming servers.”

“Now we’re really looked at as, how can you help us improve the business?” he said. “And how can we use technology to find efficiencies, or, [on the] flip side, make money?”

Mike Rice, founder and CEO of the Momba Group, an IT staffing firm, said only a few decades ago, IT leaders were not very business savvy and strategic, and they were tasked with keeping the lights on, making sure systems were up and making sure everyone was getting their emails.

“As time has gone on and technology has continued to improve, [for] a lot of CIOs, technology in general is a strategic advantage, a competitive advantage for a business,” he said. 

Most CIOs these days prefer to have a seat at the table in the boardroom, which means they are reporting to the CEO, not necessarily the chief financial officer or the chief operating officer.

“When you have a seat at the table, you’re able to explain the value of technology to the business,” Rice said. “It’s moved from what I’d consider an expense item … to now we’re investing in technology for our company to help scale and grow our company.” 

Scaling technology for revenue, efficiency

At Casey’s, several technology innovations have been implemented to modernize operations and increase revenue.

Satturu pointed to the Casey’s app and Casey’s loyalty program, which has grown to over 9 million reward members. He said that is “directly contributing to the revenue of our company.”

“We used to use paper pizza box tops, so if you collect 10 physical coupons, you could get a free pizza,” he said. “And now we have an app that allows customers and guests to find stores, customize and order pizza and other items, like general grocery and merchandise we sell inside the store for pickup or delivery, and then they earn rewards seamlessly. I mean, that has been a game changer.”

Another example of how tech is streamlining operations at Casey’s is the order management system in the kitchens, Satturu said. 

“All the orders you place, it prints order tickets for our team members who are in the store, working in the store, and to prepare the orders and even helps them calculate and tell the guest what’s the smart promise time for that pizza to be delivered for them, either pick up or for delivery,” he said. “Those impacts directly contribute to revenue and also helps us run … efficient operations.”

He said Casey’s is also seeing new revenue through advertising to customers on digital screens at fuel pumps and on the mobile app. 

CIOs and CTOs are scaling tech through their organizations and in many cases, it starts with data, said Tim Gifford, chief innovation officer at Lean TECHniques, a technology consultancy.

“Everybody wants to have a 360-degree view of their organization, and most likely, they have that data spread across multiple software applications,” Gifford said. “So trying to pull that together and create better insights is challenging, but now they want AI to sit on top of that, and if they don’t have the data in a place that the AI can get to it, it makes it more difficult. So the first step tends to be trying to get the data in a place where … AI can start to consume it.”

Brandon Gockley, chief information officer for the Iowa Clinic, said the future of the CIO role is still changing. 

“There’s CIOs, now we’re CTOs, and there’s chief digital officers,” he said. “It’s … splitting into multiple roles, because organizations are seeing the value of IT, and especially that shift where IT needs to become a strategic advantage in the future.” 

He also pointed to other emerging roles, such as the chief security officer, which specializes in security, or the chief analytics officer. 

“They’re going to standardize and develop the strategy for analytics and how you deliver that,” he said, adding that they will evolve into more specialty roles rather than one role that can encompass everything.”

Becoming change agents

CIOs and other technology leaders are tasked with being change agents, which is a whole new skillset, they said. 

“You have to win hearts over minds, and winning hearts means you need to provide clarity …  in your communication,” Satturu said. “And you [have] to paint what the end result will look like. You [have] to help them visualize that.”

Satturu also said you have to “build a sphere of influence where you’re influencing without any authority.” 

CIOs said change ultimately comes from the top of the organization.

In Satturu’s case, the Casey’s board chair, president and CEO Darren Rebelez, has established values by which the company operates every day, he said. And that comes from an acronym,  Casey’s CARES. 

“C for commitment, A for authenticity, R for respect, E for evolving and S for service,” Satturu said. “That’s a very important change management tool.”

As part of those values Satturu and other Casey’s leaders communicate to employees that they need to evolve, he said. 

“They need to be a better version than themselves today. … So that kind of mindset really helps,” he said. 

The bevy of demands now facing technology leaders is nudging leaders into training programs, higher education and cross-exposure training in their companies, experts said.

“These folks are unicorns,” said Danielle Brommer, chief growth officer with Lean TECHniques. 

She pointed to the breadth of information and knowledge they need to support their business.

“They do have experts within a variety of disciplines, with infrastructure, cloud, security, you’ve got data that’s rolling up to them now … we are seeing AI evangelists or AI strategists within this portfolio, sometimes under the CIO and sometimes as a part of the business and the strategic endeavors of these organizations,” she said. “Then, of course, software development becomes another element of that too. So, you have a really significant portfolio, often of disciplines that you are responsible for knowing enough to coordinate and orchestrate, but that is still a really tall order for these CIOs.”

When recruiting for CIO roles, most companies are not looking for “just a true tech geek,” Rice said. “They’re looking for a business savvy leader that understands where are the right opportunities from systems and processes to best utilize technology.”

With technology constantly changing, the tech leader has to be a “continuous learner,” Rice said.

Nathan Kerns, executive vice president of information technology at Fareway Stores, Inc., said he and other tech leaders are going back to get advanced degrees.

Kerns has earned two master’s degrees in business from University of Dubuque — an MBA and a master’s in management with an emphasis in communication management.

“It’s hard to find people who have the dichotomy of excellent technical acumen and excellent communication skills,” he said. “And as you keep being promoted, you shift away from that technical guru and you need that business acumen.”

Brommer said tech leaders in Central Iowa can attend leadership training programs, like TAI’s Iowa Technology Leadership Institute. She went through the program three years ago.

“Remove the title, remove your history and understand that ROI matters,” she said. “Business impact matters, communication strategy matters and often, unfortunately, what seems most logical and pragmatic based on your technical prowess and engineering mindset might be met with some tradeoffs that you have to be able to navigate based on the stakeholders that you are supporting.”

Jessica Grant, president of Paragon IT Professionals, an IT staffing and project firm based in Des Moines, said companies have gotten better at trying to help their technologists be more well-rounded, especially those in whom they see leadership qualities.

“I know some companies actually rotate some of their leaders around, where somebody might go into the operations side and work in that area for a little bit, or even vice versa,” she said. “We’ve seen a few more leaders put in CIO positions that come from the business or operation side, because the idea is their whole team under them are the technical people that really can code and do all the other things, where they need someone that can talk to the CFOs and the CEOs and the board of directors, and just as long as that person can understand enough about the technology and what needs to happen, their team really is executing on the strategy.”

The future of the CIO role remains rooted in driving business innovation and growth, Satturu said. 

“They’ll not be cost managers at all,” he said. “They’ll be value creators.”