Last year, I conducted dozens and dozens of CXOTalk interviews with some of the world’s greatest business leaders. Many of these conversations relate directly to issues of interest to CIOs.
Looking ahead to 2022, I thought it would be helpful for CIOs to summarize several models or themes that emerged from all of these discussions.
I am aware that the list below is woefully incomplete. This is a short list, so I had to leave out topics like talent management and team building, diversity and inclusion, technical debt management, migration. to the cloud and other critically important issues.
With those excuses, here are three strategic imperatives that CIOs should pay particular attention to in 2022.
First imperative of the CIO: business leadership is the goal
CIOs are part of the business. There is no “us” and “them” – no “IT and business” as it is often said. It is not said that marketing or manufacturing is not part of the business. So, why use these terms when it comes to IT?
Viewing IT as separate from business does both parties a disservice. For the CIO, this is an excuse not to deliver business results like any other organizational function. And for company executives, this view diminishes the role of IT, which is not worthy of total respect.
In fact, the most successful CIOs are change agents who lead by example to achieve business results. Paul Daugherty, group chief technology officer and chief technology officer at Accenture, explains that CIOs need to be inspiring leaders:
“The CIO must be interested in innovation. The “I” in DSI could stand for “innovation”. But it could also mean “inspiration”. The CIO must play a role in inspiring and evangelizing technology and educating the rest of the organization. The education of technology, of course, but also the education of the rest of the organization. “
It is implicit in these comments that the CIO must be closely linked to the establishment of the organization.
Satyan Parameswaran, president of IT at UPS, told me that growing the business was the real mandate of the CIO:
“CIOs are paid to deal with the changing environment, the changing business climate and, of course, the much faster evolution of technology. They must always work in close collaboration with the business departments. My philosophy is that there is only one reason technology exists at UPS: to help the business and to grow it. Every CIO needs to closely align with the business and leverage the technology for the business. “
Bill Briggs, Global CTO at Deloitte, calls on CIOs to strategically contribute to the growth of the company and warns against limiting their role to technology alone:
“The technical manager must participate in the development of the strategy. If a CIO is nothing but the voice of technology and the operational expert, the CIO of the back office, it will always be difficult to be heard. The role of the chief technology officer rises alongside that of the strategy. Likewise, the innovation function is about understanding what’s going to happen and how it applies to your organization, your business, your market, and then being able to craft the right investments. There is no need for PowerPoint presentations and perspectives. There is a need for assets and progress. Progress rather than process. “
Advice to CIOs: In 2022, your career will depend on your ability to be a leader linked to business strategies and results. If you fail to complete this mission, your role as CIO will gradually lose its relevance. Therefore, examine your role to determine where you can add value.
CIO’s second imperative: recognize the customer experience as the new digital transformation
We all know that digital transformation is at the heart of modernizing businesses, including rethinking business models and implementing technologies that help us put customers first.
From my conversations with many executives, I see customer experience as the next step in digital transformation. Although the latter emphasizes the needs of clients, it takes a broader view. When you look at every touchpoint, every interaction an organization has with its customers, you enter the realm of customer experience.
As digital transformation places the customer at the center of processes, the customer experience goes further, taking a holistic view of the entire customer journey.
In addition to all the challenges of digital transformation, creating a compelling customer experience requires the collection, analysis and understanding of customer data. Data-driven actions can range from redesigning products, customizing offers to be intuitive, useful, and not spooky, to revising processes to make them more user-friendly.
Technology enables all of these changes, making CIOs a crucial player in the customer experience.
Cynthia Stoddard, CIO of Adobe, shared her thoughts on how she embraces the customer experience:
“When I look at the challenges, I tie them all together around the word ‘experience’: experience from the point of view of our employees and experience from the point of view of our customers. On the employee side, we have created a number of personas around our employees to help them be more productive in the world we currently live in, not only with their work tools, but also to balance their lives, as it there is no longer any border between work and home. Everything is intertwined, so we are looking at different applications to really help the employee. Happy employees make happy customers. “
“On the customer side, it’s all about the customer experience, making sure that when they access our websites or any of our products, they are reliable, dynamic and do what the customer expects. of them. “
Dan Bodner, CEO of customer engagement software provider Verint, explained to me why the customer experience is now a priority for many organizations:
“Consumers have a choice. They can easily change supplier. Customer experience is directly linked to customer loyalty, repeat customer transactions and brand reputation. Customers with a high Net Promoter Scores (NPS) will promote the brand to their friends. Business leaders can measure it and see the correlation between customer experience, customer sentiment and the company’s results in terms of revenue, growth and bottom line. “
To dig deeper into this point, I asked Fred Reichheld, creator of the Net Promotor Score system (and industry legend), what the connection between customer loyalty and revenue was:
“When customers feel loved, they feel like they are taken care of, that they can trust their supplier to act in their best interests, it creates the kind of community that customers want to be a part and for which they will work hard to stay. Very few companies do this today. Those who do succeed thrive and prosper. “
“When I say ‘customers first’, that doesn’t mean you have to forget about investors or employees. Of course, you have to work for these stakeholders. But until customers like doing business with you, other stakeholders can never prosper in the long run. “
Advice to CIOs: improve the customer experience to generate revenue. Historically, the role of the CIO has focused on systems, technology and internal processes. In 2022, spend more time with an outside view to see where you can help improve customer loyalty and contribute to revenue growth.
CIO’s third imperative: strategic data is your future
Data is at the heart of business strategy and decision-making in our digital world, with machine learning and AI gradually permeating every function of the business. For CIOs, the implication is simple: develop your data capabilities and collaborate with business peers to choose the right problems and identify useful outcomes.
KeyBank CIO Amy Brady explains the strategic importance of data and why she thinks it’s so valuable to her business:
“Our greatest asset is clearly our customers. But one of the most important assets (beyond our customers) is our data. Our data isn’t as important as what we do with it, turning it into actionable information. Actionable in the sense that we can help our customers make better decisions. Data is truly the fuel that enables us to manage our processes, our interactions with our customers and our end-to-end digital processes, from the interaction with the customer to the interactions with the employees that we manage every day. “
Choosing which business problems to solve using data can be a challenge for an CIO. I asked Bruno Aziza, Data and Analytics Manager for Google Cloud, how to select the data issues that are meaningful to the business. It’s easier said than done :
“Think about the issues that most relate to business value to your organization. The opportunity for data is so great that you tend to want to do it all. Focus on business value, business metrics. What does the data allow to achieve? There is a huge opportunity there. “
“The two areas where we see people not failing but going astray is when you look at what I call the ‘why not’. Why not take a look at this use case? It looks interesting, but doesn’t necessarily lead to a specific value. Then there are the other use cases that sound great because they’re so innovative, but they don’t really relate to some of the core issues your organization is trying to solve. “
Establishing a close working relationship with the data team is crucial to building a strong data position. I asked Sol Rashidi, Chief Analytics Officer of cosmetics maker Estee Lauder, how to partner with the data and analytics team:
“Make more use of your data and analytics team. Put her to work. These can be weekly meetings. These may be quarterly reviews. These could be reviews of major strategic initiatives that you need to unlock or activate. “
“Bring a member of your D&A team into your inner circle. Treat him like one of your own. Make him participate. Let him give his point of view. That doesn’t mean you have to agree, but you don’t know which nugget you’re going to discover. “
CIO Tip: Build Your Data Analytics Capabilities Now. Data and machine learning will become increasingly important in 2022. Now is the time to take a look at all aspects of your data team, processes and plans.
Source: ZDNet.com