The World Bank predicts that global growth will average 2.2% through the rest of this decade. This is the lowest rate in 30 years and makes economic uncertainty the latest challenge for organizations to overcome. As a result, CIOs need to rethink how they approach digital transformation. After several years of constant disruption, the days of simply adding more and more technology to drive transformation must be firmly in the rearview mirror.
The ability to adapt and weather constant disruption is now a key driver of transformation. Enterprises are looking for ways to drive efficiency and productivity as they pivot to meet new markets and changing customer needs or gain an edge over competitors. This requires organizations to be more pragmatic in their approach and look at transformation through a different lens.
With uncertainty as the new normal, CIOs must develop a flexible roadmap that can support the organization’s evolving needs. But despite the pressure to eliminate waste and find efficiencies due to the global gloom, hitting pause on digital transformation isn’t the answer. It’s clear that our reliance on technology will only increase; therefore, deploying it effectively is mission-critical. As organizations strive for operational excellence, here are three foundations to embrace:
1. Consider the business impact.
CIOs need to shift from a technology-focused approach to digital transformation and instead hone in on the business impact. They must forensically examine the organization’s strategic objectives and determine the technology roadmap to support and accelerate achieving these goals. Reorienting every technology decision around business impact helps reduce waste and the temptation to add technology for the sake of innovation rather than the outcome. This is a challenging cultural shift for many CIOs, but the quicker they embrace it, the better for the enterprise.
With the financial headwinds set to continue, CIOs must ensure that the technology they invest in adds value. For example, every entity can benefit from automating critical administrative processes across departments, so CIOs should explore how to do this as part of transformation initiatives.
2. Focus on building agility and resiliency.
With uncertainty dominating the decade, agility and resiliency aren’t optional if organizations want to survive and ultimately thrive. Often seen solely as the purview of early-stage or technology companies, this ethos is critical irrespective of size or industry. Recent events such as supply chain disruption, inflation and fluctuating energy prices have impacted most organizations. For example, during the pandemic, the ability to diversify suppliers was critical for many businesses to survive. Going forward, every enterprise needs to be able to build resiliency and ensure it can pivot. By adopting an iterative approach to technology implementation and creating a culture of experimentation and innovation, CIOs can ensure that transformation efforts enable the business to adapt more quickly to external and internal pressures.
3. Sustainability principles are mandatory.
Rather than viewing sustainability as optional, it’s a business imperative, and CIOs must ensure that digital transformation aids these efforts. Sustainability principles need to help shape technology roadmaps, such as ways to reduce energy consumption and reuse materials. Gartner analysts identified that CEOs now view sustainability as a top 10 business priority.
Another critical step is to evaluate the technology infrastructure for any redundancies, inefficiencies or dormant technologies. With the rapid acceleration of digitization, many organizations now have a complex sprawl of legacy systems and applications that need rationalization. This requires CIOs to have clarity on how their systems and applications are working and look for any duplication or idle systems. Enterprise architecture tools are one path to understanding and simplifying the digital landscape, which in turn can minimize costs and the carbon footprint of associated IT activities and data centers. The CIO now has a pivotal role in supporting sustainability mandates by providing insights to the enterprise into how technology transformation is helping meet environmental goals.
CIOs need to recognize that digital transformation isn’t simply about technology innovation. Instead, they must take a 360-degree look at the entire company and implement a strategy that aids organizations in their quest to drive business impact, increase agility and resiliency and support sustainability efforts. By incorporating these three foundations, CIOs are future-proofing the success of the enterprise along with their role.
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Forbes
