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AI for CIO / VP ITs

Run IT with sharper data and less manual overhead.

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The shift

How AI is changing the CIO / VP IT role

In 2026, AI is taking over much of the drafting and synthesis work that fills a CIO's week, from summarizing vendor contracts and SOC 2 reports to building first-draft budget scenarios and board updates. It is also surfacing patterns across ticketing, security, and spend data that used to require an analyst team. The role shifts toward judgment: deciding which risks to accept, which vendors to trust, and where to invest, while AI handles the assembly.

What AI can take off your plate

  • First drafts of board decks, status reports, and executive summaries
  • Summarizing vendor contracts, SOC 2 reports, and security questionnaires
  • Triaging and routing IT support tickets and drafting knowledge base articles
  • Pulling spend and license data into consolidation and renewal reports
  • Building initial budget scenarios and variance explanations

What stays distinctly human

  • Deciding which security and vendor risks the business will accept
  • Building trust with the CEO, board, and peer executives
  • Setting the technology strategy that fits the company's direction
  • Negotiating major contracts and managing key vendor relationships
  • Coaching and developing the IT team and resolving conflicts
Tools

Five AI tools for CIO / VP ITs

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365
Drafts board decks, summarizes long email and Teams threads, and pulls answers from internal SharePoint and Excel data without manual digging.
ChatGPT (GPT-4o / Enterprise)
Acts as a thinking partner for strategy memos, RFP scoring rubrics, and translating technical risk into plain language for executives.
ServiceNow Now Assist
Summarizes incident trends, drafts knowledge articles, and routes and triages tickets so the IT team spends less time on repetitive support.
Claude (Anthropic)
Reads full vendor contracts, MSAs, and security questionnaires and flags risky clauses, renewal terms, and data handling gaps.
Glean
Searches across all company apps to answer questions like which teams use a tool or where a policy lives, useful for license rationalization and audits.
Prompts

Five prompts to try today

Paste these into Claude or ChatGPT and replace the bracketed parts with your own details.

1. Vendor contract review
Review this vendor contract and list the renewal terms, auto-renewal dates, price escalation clauses, data ownership terms, and any clauses that limit our ability to exit. Flag anything unusual for a SaaS agreement: [paste contract]
2. Board update draft
Draft a one-page IT update for the board covering these three areas: [security posture], [major project status], [budget vs actuals]. Use plain language, lead with risks and decisions needed, and keep it under 400 words.
3. Incident postmortem
Turn these incident notes into a blameless postmortem with a timeline, root cause, customer impact, and 3 to 5 concrete prevention actions with owners: [paste incident notes]
4. Budget scenario planning
Given this current IT budget breakdown [paste numbers], build three scenarios for next year: flat, 10 percent cut, and 10 percent growth. Show what gets cut or added in each and the risk tradeoffs.
5. Tool consolidation analysis
Here is our list of software subscriptions with cost and user counts [paste list]. Identify overlapping tools, likely underused licenses, and consolidation opportunities ranked by estimated annual savings.

A day in your inbox

This is the kind of brief a CIO / VP IT gets, every weekday morning.
Weekday morning
✦ Personalized for: CIO / VP IT
Today's Tool
Claude for a renewal you forgot was coming
Paste the full MSA and ask Claude to extract the auto-renewal date, notice period, and price increase terms. It will tell you the deadline to renegotiate before you are locked in for another year.
Today's Prompt
Find the buried exit clause
Ask: Review this contract and tell me exactly what we must do to terminate, including notice windows and any early termination fees. Quote the relevant sections. This turns a 40-page document into a clear answer in minutes.
Today's Trick
Make AI argue against your decision
After drafting a strategy or vendor choice, ask the AI to make the strongest case against it. The counterarguments often expose assumptions you would rather catch before the board does.

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