r/CIO

I was reading an interesting article about how a lot of AI use cases create value, but not all of them are “materially” visible in the numbers. There seems to be a gap between the types of projects companies invest in and the ones that actually show a "material" return.

Part of that gap, I think, has to do with the fact that a lot of the investment today is going into improving individual productivity. Copilots, assistants, tools that help people move faster.

And let’s say that works. Maybe something that used to take a week now takes a day. But then what happens with the rest of the time?

Is it actually being used in something more valuable, or does it just get absorbed into other low-impact tasks? or even nothing at all?

When AI is applied at the process level, things change. You’re redefining how the work gets done. Tasks get reorganized, and that time saved is usually reassigned in a more intentional way.

Which brings me back to the original point: which AI initiatives are actually getting executive or board-level backing?

It is a Sunday evening. If you are sitting in your room reading this, get out. Go to the park downstairs, go to the mall nearby, anywhere. Just make sure you don’t remove your phone from your pocket. Look at people, look at the products in the store (if you are in a mall), look at the sky and the birds (if at a park).

Changing your location changes your perspective. Literally and figuratively. Whatever challenges you are struggling with, sitting in the room won’t help. Walking away may.

Try it.

Hello, I've been a CIO for a few months now. Problem is I can't keep up.

Background, I have 5 direct reports. We support 12 locations and 500+ employees. My 5 employees are all of the IT staff. We have very few managed services.

My IT staff are all hourly and overtime is strictly regulated, I don't get to pick this.

Therefore any problem after hours is my problem. We have 20+ major interfaces and probably 100+ devices that all self report and have to be managed (not counting all of the 1000+ actual devices) All this falls onto the CIO. Also all networking and cyber security, etc.

Not only this all reporting (which has heavily regulated requirements) also falls on the CIO.

I just led the company through a massive software change which included changing the workflow for all users in the organization, as well as replacing all hardware. We had to do this in less than two months because my predecessor had completely given up for awhile and left everything.

I'm now over three months in, working 12 hour days 6 days a week. Thinking about the job in all my free time, neglecting my family.

My proposal to move things around and staff up keeps getting rejected. I was sternly asked to work on the one day I take off by the CEO (so 7x12 hour days).

I'm at the end of what I can possibly do mentally and physically. I need to move on to something else. If I do I'm assuming CIO for x months will end my chances of ever being a CIO again?

Did a structured 6-vendor pilot last year for AI ITSM, 2200-person org. Every demo claimed 60-70% deflection. None of them delivered that in our pilot. Few things that ended up being our actual BS detectors during the eval if its useful.

First one was just asking how each vendor defines auto-resolved. We got 4 different definitions across 6 vendors. A couple of them were counting any ticket where the chatbot suggested an article as auto-resolved even when the user came back and opened a new ticket 20 min later. That alone disqualified a few.

Reference customers were the next filter. Asking for one specific customer hitting >30% deflection in our category, in our headcount range, that we could call. Several vendors couldnt produce one. One vendors best reference was at 18%.

KB fragmentation question was the third. Our docs are spread across confluence, sharepoint, Slack channel pins, and an old wiki none of us can kill. Asking each vendor for their honest deflection floor on a fragmented KB before any cleanup separated the tools that genuinely need a clean KB from the ones that adapt.

Decisive one for us though was multi-turn behavior. Specifically, what happens when the user changes scope 4-5 messages in. Half the vendors had no answer. Of the half that did, only 2 could demo it.

Curious what questions other CIOs added that we missed.

I’ve been researching nearshore staffing lately and wanted to hear real experiences from people who’ve actually worked with nearshore teams. On paper, the benefits seem clear, better time zone alignment, easier communication, and potentially smoother collaboration compared to offshore models.

For those who’ve used nearshore staffing, did it actually improve productivity and teamwork? Or did you still run into the same challenges as traditional outsourcing

So my dad has been a CIO for several decades now and I wanted to "gift" him and his directs a custom yeti's (cause we all need more booth bait) with their company logo along with three bad advice ism's that hurt. For example "Test in Prod, Skip UAT, Send it on AI). Wanted to see what suggestions yall have. Thanks!

We're three years into a major applicationplatform consolidation project, spending six figures on licenses each year alone. And yet when I pull usage reports, maybe 40% of the org is using the tools the way they were designed to be used.

The other 60% either found workarounds, reverted to spreadsheets or are just clicking around without any real workflow attached. The problem isn't access as everyone has a login.

It's that "deployed" got mistaken as "adopted" somewhere along the way and nobody corrected it, now Finance is asking where the ROI is..

We've tried lunch-and-learns. We've done training mandates. We've tied usage to manager check-ins. Results are mixed at best.

What's actually working for your org? Are you tracking usage at the team level or the individual level? Is anyone doing this well?

Hi all, I am working on a project and genuinely curious what people in financial services verticals (banks, insurance, debt, lending etc) / ops / revenue roles think.

The product: an AI platform that helps financial services to scale their top-performing people into agents - the people who close loans, handle retention calls, onboard new members - so every customer gets that same quality of interaction.

Two names being considered:

• Encore AI
• Again AI
• Exceed AI

No right answer. What I'm curious about: which feels more trustworthy? More premium? More like something you'd actually engage with in a vendor conversation?

If you work in banking, lending, insurance, or revenue-side ops, your view is especially useful. Thanks.