The CIO’s Digital Agenda: Running IT as Digital Linchpin to Build Business Competency Aug. 2016

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. However, many IT organizations today still get stuck in the lower level of maturity, they are perceived as the weakest link by their business partners due to the slow pace for changes, reactive mode to fix the things, and lack of innovative initiatives to make a difference. In practice, how to run IT as a digital linchpin  to knit all business success factors, and connect all functional silos to ensure a seamless digital transformation?
Running IT as Digital Linchpin to Build Business Competency How to Strengthen IT from the weakest link to the business competency: At the dawn of the Digital Era, the business leaders across industries claim they are in the Information Management businesses, and IT has to become a game changer. Because the “fixing symptom” mentality is complacent, short-sighted and too “ordinary.” So how to strengthen IT from the weakest link to business competencyRunning IT as an Innovation Hub: IT is omnipresent and permeated into every corner of the organization. Forward-looking organizations are also reinventing IT reputation from a cost center to a value creator, from a static support function to a dynamic change agent; and from inside-out operation driven to outside-in customer-centric. To put simply, how can IT build differentiated capabilities to become an information power center and an innovation engine?Running IT with Digital Fluency  Organizations large and small are on the journey to shift from static, inflexible industrial business settings to living digital business dynamic which is organic, alive, holistic, vibrant, energetic, responsive, fluid, and innovative. Digitalization means hyper-connectivity, over-complexity, and interdependence; it blurs the functional border, organizational border,  industry vertical border, geographic border, and knowledge domain border. IT plays a significant role in such a transformation because technology is often the disruptive force and information is the lifeblood to keep the business flow. But the first things first, how to run IT with digital fluency?How to Run IT as a Changing Organization? For forward-looking and highly mature organizations,  the IT department has become synonymous with the change department: In order to make effective changes, you have to know the underneath structure and processes of your business, because they underpin digital capabilities of the organization. How do you make changes to anything without knowing all the parts and how they are related? A mature organization is one that can quickly and safely assess all of the consequences of a possible change and devise effective plans to achieve and sustain those changes - and to do this continuously. Running IT as a Business Optimizer:  IT is the spinal cord for the organization, integrating various functional capabilities to bring out technology-enabled business solutions, motivating the IT team to constantly deliver multidimensional IT values. Today's organizations have to continue to keep digital fit to adapt to changes with increasing speed. So how to run IT as a business optimizer for improving business efficiency, enhancing innovation, harness agility, build resilience, and ultimately achieve high-performing business expectation??
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