Many IT organizations don’t have a value problem as much as a value articulation problem.

Several factors drive this:

• Benefits show up in business metrics, not IT metrics. The impact of IT initiatives is usually reflected in business-unit financials and workflow efficiencies, not in traditional IT KPIs. That makes it harder for CIOs to connect their work directly to revenue, margin, or market share.
• IT is seen as “keeping the lights on.” Operational improvements, security enhancements, and risk-reduction programs are often viewed as basic IT hygiene instead of strategic value drivers. This can push IT into a cost-center narrative.
• Perception gaps are real. Research shows a divide between how well IT believes it is performing and how business executives perceive the value delivered. Examples include low executive perception of IT services and underperforming digital investments.
• Leadership identity is split. In the 2025 State of the CIO report, 82% of CIOs say their roles are becoming more digital- and innovation-focused, but only 50% see themselves as business leaders. That gap makes it harder to tie technology investments to business outcomes.

To address this, CIOs need to:

• Communicate in business terms (growth, margin, customer experience), not just technical achievements.
• Use trusted data to capture financial impact, not only qualitative benefits.
• Build roadmaps that deliver value with every release, so stakeholders see a steady stream of outcomes rather than distant promises.

Framing AI purely as a cost-cutting tool limits its perceived value and reinforces the idea that IT is just a cost center.

Leaders in the article highlight several shifts CIOs should make:

• Focus on capability expansion. As Ha Hoang, CIO at Commvault, notes, the real opportunity is not just expense reduction but expanding capabilities—improving operational efficiency, speeding up decision-making, and enhancing customer and employee experiences.
• Look beyond headcount reduction. Vikram Bhandari from Riveron points out that when AI ROI is framed only as headcount reduction, IT gets boxed into a cost narrative. The bigger opportunity is to scale revenue, reporting, and decision-making without linear cost growth.
• Measure ROI even when it’s uncertain. Ryan Downing of Principal Financial Group emphasizes the importance of creating space to test, learn, and pressure test assumptions, then aligning early insights with enterprise strategy so teams can scale what works and sunset what doesn’t.

Practical ways to reimagine AI’s value story:

• Prioritize AI use cases that drive revenue, enable new products, or transform customer experiences, not just internal efficiencies.
• Partner with the CMO on AI growth initiatives. Today, 93% of marketers have a dedicated gen AI budget, but only 8% are very confident in their organization’s AI governance. CIOs can close this gap with governance that balances guardrails and growth.
• Develop data products that support repeatable decisions with reliable data, and measure value through adoption and business outcomes.

Over time, the real impact of AI comes when it allows the organization to operate differently and unlock new growth, not just do the same work with fewer people.

CIOs can make IT’s value visible by tying technology directly to how people work and how decisions get made.

Key actions include:

• Track satisfaction, not just uptime. Use metrics such as employee satisfaction (ESat) with the IT service desk, customer satisfaction (CSat) with digital tools, and stakeholder satisfaction with AI-enabled workflows. If satisfaction and usage aren’t improving, users are likely turning to alternatives, including shadow IT.
• Follow the work-arounds. As Tomás Dostal Freire of Miro notes, when people create work-arounds or use unofficial tools, it’s a strong signal that something in the workflow isn’t working. IT’s role is to formalize what already works and then measure improvements in speed, quality, or delivery.
• Bring engineers closer to the business. With AI-assisted coding and “vibe coding,” there’s an opportunity to free up engineers to observe how people actually get work done and build their business acumen, instead of focusing only on implementation.
• Invest in change management and AI literacy. As SaaS platforms reimagine their user experiences around agentic AI and workflow integrations, CIOs need to help employees build AI literacy and transition to new ways of working.

World-class IT organizations tend to:

• Develop meaningful business relationships across functions.
• Enable employees to experiment with AI safely.
• Promote lifelong learning inside IT and across the business.

When IT portfolios include roadmaps tied to growth and CIOs consistently communicate business outcomes, IT is seen less as a support function and more as a partner in reshaping how the organization operates.