Beyond Productivity: How CIOs Can Prove IT’s Business Value
- Avalia
- Oct 20
- 5 min read
The role of the CIO has evolved from “keep the lights on” to “drive business outcomes”. Yet, many IT organisations still struggle to articulate how technology investments translate into business value. According to research by Gartner, CIOs who successfully communicate IT’s business value typically secure 60 % higher funding levels than peers who focus merely on technology metrics. For CIOs at companies undergoing mergers and acquisitions, or integrating new technology platforms, proving value isn’t just nice-to-have — it’s critical for maintaining budget, credibility and strategic alignment.
In this article we’ll look at three dimensions where CIOs can prove IT’s business value — growth & transformation, cost & efficiency, and risk & resilience. We’ll also show how you can build a value-story, select the right metrics, and partner with the business to elevate IT from a cost centre to a strategic value centre.
1. Growth & Transformation: Show how IT enables business expansion
Why this matters
Business leaders expect IT not only to support existing operations but to enable new business models, faster product launches, and competitive differentiation. As one white-paper notes, companies with a strong technology and innovation culture are 10 times more likely to rank in the top 10 % for earnings and revenue growth.
What to measure
Time-to-market for new products or services (with and without the new IT investment)
Percentage of revenue from products/services launched in the past X years
Rate of digital customer or partner interactions (for example mobile, portal, API)
Market share growth in segments enabled by technology
How CIOs execute it
Align with business stakeholders (e.g., CMO, COO, business unit heads) to understand which growth initiatives technology supports.
Create a “change-value” narrative: show how a major platform or architecture shift resulted in faster launches or enabled new revenue streams.
Use business language (not just IT speak). For example: “Our new self-service portal reduced sales cycle by 25 %, supporting an additional USD 8 m of pipeline” rather than “We deprecated legacy CRM and built new microservices”.
Bring in case studies: e.g., this global enterprise reduced IT operating costs while shifting to a product model and freed up funds to invest in growth.
2. Cost & Efficiency: Quantify how IT reduces friction and cost
Why this matters
In many organisations, up to 70 % of the IT budget goes to maintaining existing operations (‘run’) rather than new initiatives (‘change’) — according to Gartner. Transforming or optimising that baseline frees up resources for strategic work or lowers the cost of business operations.
What to measure
Cost per transaction / cost per business service enabled by IT
Reduction in manual work hours due to automation or consolidation
Elimination of redundant applications or licences (application rationalisation)
Improvements in agility (e.g., provisioning time, incident resolution time)
How CIOs execute it
Link IT cost to business service: use a taxonomy like Technology Business Management (TBM) to show costs in terms of business-units and services.
Create a “run-value” narrative: illustrate how technology enabled cost-avoidance or productivity gains, and how that freed up budget for business growth.
Use both qualitative and quantitative metrics. For example: “By retiring 150 legacy apps we saved USD 12 m over 3 years and cut vendor complexity by 40%.”
Regularly revisit and update metrics; business priorities shift, and so should IT value stories.
3. Risk & Resilience: Demonstrate how IT protects and enables the business
Why this matters
Technology risks — cyber, compliance, reliability — have direct business consequences. Business executive stakeholders often rank risk-mitigation very high. CFOs expect IT to reduce business risk, not just deliver functionality. According to Gartner, though 94% of CIOs believed they understood how tech impacts corporate financials, only 62% of CFOs agreed.
What to measure
Application or service availability impacts on business processes (e.g., 99.9% uptime corresponded to X transactions processed)
Cost or loss avoided because of improved resilience (e.g., avoided downtime, avoided data breach costs)
Time to detect/respond to incidents, and how that improved due to IT investments
Compliance/regulatory metrics tied to IT controls (for example, number of audit findings avoided)
How CIOs execute it
Partner early with the CFO/risk function: align on what risks matter most and how technology contributes to avoiding them.
Translate risk metrics into business consequences. For example: “Every hour of downtime costs the business USD 250,000 in lost revenue; our enhanced platform cut incidents by 60 % and saved approx. USD 1.5 m per annum.”
Include non-financial value as well: brand reputation, regulatory avoidance, customer trust. These count as business value even if they don’t show immediately on the profit & loss.
Build a combined narrative: run, change and risk stories all converge in the business. Show how IT minimises risk while still enabling growth and cost-efficiency.
4. Building Your Value Story: A Practical Framework
Step A: Identify business-priority outcomes
Start with what the business cares about: revenue growth, market share, cost reduction, risk mitigation, customer experience. CIOs must ask: “What outcomes do our business stakeholders value?” Gartner rule #1 emphasises that value is determined by the stakeholder, not IT.
Step B: Map IT initiatives to those outcomes
For each major IT investment or initiative (e.g., cloud migration, data-platform build, automation rollout), map how it ties to a business outcome. Example: Cloud migration → faster provisioning → new product launch time reduced by 30% → enabling X m revenue.
Step C: Select meaningful KPIs
Avoid purely technical KPIs (e.g., number of tickets closed). Use outcome-based KPIs: e.g., % of revenue from digital channels, cost per service delivered, reduction in mean time to recover (MTTR) after outages. Gartner found only 22% of organisations had standardised processes to map IT spend to business KPIs.
Step D: Communicate in business language
Avoid jargon. Use terms like “enabling”, “accelerating”, “reducing cost”, “increasing revenue”, “mitigating risk”. Translate technical metrics into business terms: “Our 99.9% uptime supports 1.2 m transactions per day, worth USD $35m in revenue.”
Step E: Report regularly and adapt
Make value-reporting part of your cadence. Monthly dashboards, quarterly business-reviews. Use this to course-correct, highlight opportunities, and keep IT aligned with business shifts. The CFO-CIO partnership is critical.
Step F: Use internal linkages and collaboration
Work with Finance, Operations, Marketing, Business Units. Use a Finance-friendly model (like TBM) so budgeting and spend transparency become common language. For example, many organisations use TBM to align IT cost-transparency and business benefit.
5. How Avalia Systems Helps CIOs Prove IT’s Value
Avalia’s Technology Due Diligence Service provides a “tech value assessment” before acquisition, identifying cost-savings, rationalisation opportunities and value-unlocking from Day 1.
Avalia’s Post-Merger IT Alignment programme helps you operationalise value by mapping combined IT estates to business capabilities, defining KPIs, rationalising applications, aligning cost and benefit across legacy and new entities.
Avalia’s Digital Platform & Integration offering ensures technology is delivered in business language, aligning with stakeholders and using frameworks like TBM for cost transparency and value clarity.
To remain relevant, the CIO must do more than optimise cost and run technology. By aligning IT with business priorities, selecting meaningful outcome-based metrics, and building a compelling value story, IT will move from being a cost centre to a strategic value driver.
Ready to show real business value from your IT investments? Book a tech evaluation with Avalia Systems and see how we support digital integration after mergers, drive cost transparency, and align your tech portfolio with business outcomes.
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