CIOs will drop vendors who cannot prove outcomes, scale pilots, and build resilience

CIOs face a clock that starts ticking the moment a rollout begins.

Boards now expect tangible business value within 12 months, whether from ERP, AI, or cloud programs.

Delivery alone does not satisfy that expectation, performance must be proven in measurable terms.

Vendors that continue to sell features or pilots without tying them to resilience, revenue, and adoption will be ignored.

To remain relevant, vendors need to position themselves as partners who can help CIOs defend investments at the board table and recover political capital when projects come under scrutiny.

Reason 1: Outcomes, not deployments, define vendor value

Jessica Eyes, Digital Leader at McKinsey & Company, highlighted how Australian CIOs are operating in one of the most challenging contexts globally, with tech spend now outpacing health, rising regulatory penalties, and board-level scrutiny on cyber and ESG.

She pointed to ERP and AI programs as prime examples of where value leakage happens: only 22% run on time, with cost overruns of 78%, and most deliver less than half the promised value.

The traps are predictable: over-customisation, vendor lock-in, a fixation on go-live dates, and adoption failures that see staff fall back to spreadsheets.

For boards, these reframe IT projects as broken commercial bets.

David Walker, Chief Technology Officer at Westpac Group, brought this home with hard metrics.

He used a simple “ball of mud” architecture map to show executives the cost of complexity, then translated it into dollars.

Every $1 of change was costing Westpac an additional $0.70 because of duplication, which is a language the board, steeped in financial governance, immediately understood.

By reframing technical debt as a commercial drag, David gained alignment for a $3 billion transformation.

He also set a clear target state, systems that are “built for change, evergreen, automated, and digital to the core”, which became a rallying point executives could measure against.

50% of CIOs now expect ROI within 12 months of a major rollout.

Boards compare IT investments against branches, products, or acquisitions.

If outcomes are not visible in that timeframe, CIOs lose political capital and vendors lose credibility.

Vendors that frame duplication, delay, or resilience gaps in dollar terms, as David did, gain alignment faster than those who rely on technical language alone.

Vendor actions:

• Surface board-level metrics in proposals, cost avoidance, resilience gains, and revenue uplift expressed in dollar terms.
• Provide a roadmap of proof points at 3, 6, and 12 months so CIOs can show progress early and often.
• Demonstrate how your solution reduces technical debt and frees budget for growth initiatives.

Risk of inaction: Vendors that deliver feature lists without quantified outcomes are sidelined when boards benchmark them against competitors who can speak in financial terms.

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Reason 2: Vendors earn trust by turning pilots into enterprise platforms

Only 13% of CIOs report successful AI deployment, with success rates jumping to 86% when initiatives focus on cost reduction compared to 9% otherwise.

Pilots without measurable adoption are seen as wasted effort.

Boards and executives demand platforms that embed into workflows, scale across divisions, and deliver outcomes at enterprise level.

Peter Barrass, Divisional CIO at ANZ, showed how this is achieved in practice.

ANZ’s payments platform was deliberately built as an enterprise-wide capability.

It now runs transactions across retail, commercial, and institutional divisions, while also being white-labelled to smaller banks that lack the infrastructure.

This move consolidated duplicated systems, reduced risk, and created new revenue streams, proving that scale and reuse define true transformation.

At RMIT, CIO Sinan Erbay demonstrated the same principle through VAL (Virtual Assisted Learning), a secure generative AI platform developed in-house.

What began as a six-week proof of concept was scaled within months across Australia and Vietnam, giving both staff and students safe and equitable access to AI.

Adoption was strong because the university embedded it directly into learning and administrative workflows, rather than leaving it as a siloed pilot.

Matthew Barratt and Simon Carlson from WalkMe underlined how fragile programs become without adoption strategies.

In a state government rollout, 30,000 staff were unable to access payslips after a payroll go-live.

Instead of rolling back, WalkMe’s in-app guidance provided continuity within an hour.

Flight Centre applied the same approach to AI in its booking flows, enabling frontline agents to recommend hotels and upsell services without needing advanced digital skills.

Pilots that stay siloed drain credibility; platforms that consolidate duplication or generate new revenue, as ANZ achieved, reset the board conversation.

Vendors that show this transition gain long-term contracts, while those who cannot are stuck in proofs of concept with no enterprise budget.

Vendor actions:

• Design adoption into the product. Embed enablement, workflow integration, and in-app guidance that support end users.
• Show CIOs how a pilot can be reused across divisions or even extended to external customers, as ANZ achieved with payments.
• Provide adoption metrics and business-case evidence that CIOs can take directly to their boards.

Risk of inaction: Vendors that stop at proofs of concept are trapped in pilot purgatory, failing to secure enterprise-wide contracts, losing credibility with boards, and eventually being replaced by partners who can prove adoption at scale.

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Reason 3: Simplification must be sold as resilience delivered, not cost saved

ADAPT data revealed that 37% of CIO budgets in 2025 will be consumed by “keeping the lights on”.

This limits transformation capacity and exposes organisations to risk. Simplification has moved from an efficiency tactic to a resilience strategy.

Peter Alexander, Chief Technology Officer at the Department of Defence, said Defence cannot fight and win in the digital age while operating in silos.

Reducing fragmentation across Army, Navy, and Air Force is essential to enabling coalition operations.

For Defence, simplification underpins readiness and the ability to work seamlessly with partners.

Andrew Cresp, Chief Information Officer at NGM Group, extended the argument into financial services.

He explained that every additional banking ecosystem doubles the compliance load and creates another cyber target.

Resources that should fuel innovation are instead spent on maintaining duplicated systems, leaving boards to choose between sustaining risk or funding growth.

Melissa Bischoping, Senior Director of Security and Product Design Research at Tanium, shifted the focus from systems to people.

She warned that 69% of IT staff in Australia report burnout, making workforce fatigue a structural weakness in itself.

Vulnerability teams drowning in spreadsheets and manual patching cannot keep pace when attacker dwell times have collapsed from months to days.

She urged CIOs to invest in automation and continuous exposure management as safeguards for both infrastructure and talent.

Vendors who prove they can shrink this footprint are seen as enabling resilience, not adding complexity.

Those who frame simplification as risk reduction, as Peter and Andrew did, stand apart from competitors still pitching it as cost-cutting.

Vendor actions:

• Show how your solution consolidates duplicated platforms and streamlines compliance obligations.
• Automate routine, high-volume tasks to relieve exhausted IT teams and free them for higher-value work.
• Demonstrate reductions in cyber exposure and attack surfaces as measurable resilience outcomes.

Risk of inaction: Vendors that pitch simplification as cost-cutting fail to connect with the resilience narrative CIOs present to their boards.

They risk being sidelined when investment decisions prioritise platforms that strengthen operational readiness.

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Recommended actions for tech vendors

To remain in the CIO conversation, vendors must align with the outcomes boards now demand and demonstrate these capabilities in every engagement:

• Prove ROI in financial terms within 12 months, backed by 3-, 6-, and 12-month proof points.
• Surface cost avoidance, resilience gains, and revenue impacts in proposals.
• Provide adoption models that scale across divisions and workflows, with embedded enablement and reuse.
• Simplify estates by consolidating platforms, automating repetitive work, and shrinking attack surfaces.
• Help CIOs recover political capital with boards by providing metrics they can use to defend investments.

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CIOs are being measured on outcomes their boards can see and quantify.

They are under pressure to deliver ROI inside 12 months, prove adoption beyond pilots, and simplify estates to strengthen resilience.

These expectations redefine what they look for in vendor partnerships.

Vendors who can prove financial impact, support enterprise adoption, and enable resilience will stay in the boardroom conversation.

Those who cannot will be excluded from budget cycles and left behind by competitors who can speak the language of outcomes.

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