Unleash IT Potential to Accelerate Digital Transformation

IT is the business, but it is not a business in its own right, rather, a business whose purpose is to enable the core business or drive business growth. In other words, IT should be the same as any other business unit, defining the business goals which it will deliver against and the measures by which success can be assessed. IT is always striving to improve its value to the business. CIOs as digital leaders, how to unleash IT potential to accelerate digital transformation?
Improving revenue and catalyzing business growth: IT is roughly coupled to the business strategy, often technology is the disruptive force of digital innovation, and information is the “gold mine” of the business. IT can either make or break a company, IT strategy now becomes integral component of business strategy, and history reveals that IT needs to be understood and harnessed by all stakeholders, to fulfill its potential and strategic importance as a differentiator of companies. IT leaders should become the business advisor, and make sure that the executive team first understands what it needs to drive future business growth, put the framework in place to map the strategic objectives into performance measures and then determine what technology investments will accelerate the changes you want to see in your performance indicators.
Improving speed/agility (speed to market, ability to change etc): IT is only increasing in importance and relevance with each passing day. Business expects IT to figure out ways to make the business agiler. IT shifts from “T” technology focused to “I” driven - Information, Intelligence, Innovation, Integration, Improvement, Interface. The numerous perceptions of IT guiding business towards the right direction and to deliver services / solutions address concerns for TCO and future agility. That could mean helping business to implement premium products and solutions so the business is able to efficiently utilize limited capital for bringing more products & services to the market, that could mean creating efficiencies in the processes so business can compete with the competition in terms of offering products & services faster than competitors,     Improving Customer Acquisition/Retention (optimize end customer experience): With IT consumerization trend and high level of digital convenience today, IT directly influence a customer's perception of a business. The focus of the CIO’s role has changed from product-oriented to client-oriented. IT has both internal customers and external customers, it needs to improve internal customers’ productivity, and delight external customers via digitizing customer experiences. Deploy a range of technologies that focus purely on improving the customer's experience and perception of business services, showing the customer that you are making significant investment to deliver to them products / services which more closely meet their needs, you are doing so to a greater extent than your competitors. IT enables business innovation to create a value proposition that would move your prospects to become your clients; more importantly, to improve customer retention. To the degree that IT can help companies keep in touch with their prospects and clients in a personalized manner, the greater degree of success that company will experience in comparison to its competition.
Managing risks (reduces business system downtime, create business continuity): Technology brings both significant opportunities and risk for organizations today, the business expects IT to play a critical role in GRC, to ensure rigorous compliance with regulatory requirements and move up business from risk mitigation to risk intelligence, in order to run and protect business flawlessly. There are two aspects to managing risk, assessing it and then evaluating it against acceptable levels (risk appetite.) The CIO will generally drive a periodic risk assessment, usually with the help and input of multiple areas. But it is up to board or other governance body to determine if the risk level identified is acceptable. The CIO does not own the risk, but he/she can (and should ) certainly be tasked with assessing and monitoring the risk on an ongoing basis. Optimizing cost (reduces the cost of the current business process, improve margins, freeing up capital for new ventures, etc):  Instead of just cost cutting, IT needs to have long term perspective of cost optimization, all IT spending must be rationalized against the business benefits. IT needs to continue fine tuning its own process to achieve operation excellence via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. The approach is to implement a program that like a gardener would prune the tree and nurture the valuable solutions and optimize cost. Pruning the weeds would face resistance, however, at the end of the day, this was not just an IT decision and rather than let the senior management team beat them up, by understanding and communicating the actual costs. IT plays a crucial role in optimizing business operation management capacity with a keen eye to grasp growth opportunities, manage risks, and improve operational efficiency via applying lightweight technologies seamlessly.
IT is about using technology to lower costs, improve operations, and increase revenue. Effective IT management means understanding every island of operation and every workflow process. It is through this comprehensive understanding that a CIO would be able to identify true cost savings, workflow optimizations, customer-centricity, and additional revenue opportunities. Develop an IT organization that is flexible to accommodate rapidly changing business strategies and requirements, unleash its full potential to accelerate digital transformation.

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