By Workday Staff Writers
According to our latest global survey, the requirements of digital transformation are placing huge demands on technology leaders. See how CIOs can gain a strategic edge in the new world of work.
Because technology has become so firmly embedded in almost every organisation’s strategy and decision-making, the CIO’s role is more important than ever.
From collaborating with the CFO to plan, execute and analyse operational change at pace and scale, to empowering the CHRO to deliver hybrid and inclusive digital experiences, the CIO key. They’re a driver of organisational agility and sustainable digital transformation and ensure a sound data foundation is in place across the whole business.
However, according to our global survey of 437 IT leaders ‘Closing the acceleration gap: Toward sustainable digital transformation’, digital transformation efforts are creating daunting demands for CIOs. We found that half of IT leaders (50%) are struggling to keep pace with IT service upgrades, and 59% say that it can take weeks or months to change an automated business process.
So, how can CIOs attain and retain a strategic edge in the new world of work?
Pace of change will make or break the CIO
Despite frustrations with their ability to keep up and amid challenging conditions for all functions during the pandemic, IT leaders are actually the most optimistic of all leaders about their ability to continue to meet the demands of their organisations. More than half (53%) agree that their teams are equipped to ensure continuity in times of crisis – the highest proportion of any of the business functions surveyed.
Digital transformation leader, Charles Ewen, who is CIO and Director of Technology at the Met Office (the UK’s national weather service), says the Met Office started “from a great place with much work done” when transitioning to working remotely due to COVID-19. But he also warns there is little room, or time, for complacency.
Organisations that broke into this field during the pandemic are now leapfrogging ahead. “I don’t think we’ve built the pace and momentum that some other organisations have built,” he acknowledges. “The risk is that we’re going to be left behind.”
For digitally mature businesses such as the Met Office, dealing with legacy systems poses a major organisational and technical challenge. According to our research, just 42% of IT leaders are confident in their teams’ ability to adopt cloud technologies without legacy constraints. That said, they’re driven by the knowledge that unifying technology is the key to data accessibility and can unlock their ability to deliver on digital transformation initiatives. Because of this, more than 45% view unifying technology as a priority investment area to help their team meet the demands of the business as it evolves.
Bigger-picture visionaries with customer focus
Another challenge lies in the increasingly multidisciplinary nature of the CIO role, which has evolved as technology continues to help companies achieve their wider business objectives.
As well as a 360-degree view of the business, a customer-first mindset is a vital attribute of the progressive CIO. An intense focus on the consumer is in the DNA of e-commerce company Tokopedia, which has identified key technology priorities as a foundation for its innovation. “Tokopedia intends to continue to innovate by offering, through technology, solutions to any problems Indonesians experience” explains Tokopedia CTO Herman Widjaja.
Charles Ewen from the Met Office also highlights growing evidence of multidisciplinary skills within the IT function, a trend that has grown in response to customer needs: “Often, part of application development these days will involve an element of data science, as well as UX specialists, social scientists and hardcore scientists. That’s the kind of team that will engage with the customer, try to discover what they want and then go ahead and build it.”
Having half of the picture is often worse than not having anything at all, because you can make half-baked decisions.
of IT leaders plan to invest in compliance, and/or privacy and protection
plan to invest in technology to unify financial, people and operational data
plan to invest in technology to integrate data better between disparate systems/break down data silos
plan to invest in improved access to quality, useable data
plan to invest in faster acquisition of new skills and talent
Source: 'Closing the Acceleration Gap: Toward Sustainable Digital Transformation,' Workday 2022
A data-first culture to facilitate change
Data security, privacy and governance are critical concerns for CIOs. The need to transform digitally, at pace, requires them to reimagine their place as the gatekeepers of all data and decentralise the report-writing function. By doing this they can start to liberate themselves to focus on innovation and transformation projects.
For example, more than one-third of IT leaders (35%) are focused on removing reliance on IT as data gatekeepers in order to democratise decision-making and empower their teams to become strategic partners of the wider business. This highlights the need for IT leaders to provide secure channels, applications and systems that will allow their organisations to break down data silos while maintaining a firm grip on data security and governance.
Ensuring all business leaders are confident using a data-first approach will also be critical to the success both of the CIO and of the wider organisation. For example, to empower CHROs and their teams to overcome critical skills and talent-management issues, CIOs must ensure that the right data is unified and made accessible. They must also check HR leaders are equipped with the skills, tools and access necessary to remain informed of new developments in real time – not once they’re a problem or an opportunity has already passed.
CIO: Data-literacy champion?
Artificial intelligence (AI) analytics will have an increasingly important role to play in helping teams crunch the numbers, supporting the CIO in delivering data-fuelled transformation. “There’s so much data that you need to ask 100,000 different questions of it to really get at the insights” says Pete Schlampp, Chief Strategy Officer at Workday. “Most businesses lack the people and the skills to interpret the data in front of them. That’s where we have to rely on machines to help us find the trends we need to look at.”
According to Pete Schlampp, few companies have all of the data they need collated in one location. Our research shows only 12% of leaders say their business data is fully accessible to those who need it. Schlampp suggests looking at only part of the available data can have pitfalls: “Having half of the picture is often worse than not having anything at all, because you can make half-baked decisions.”
To retain a strategic edge in the new world of work, CIOs must champion data literacy and communicate its business value across their organisations. CIOs already know that data is at the core of the digital transformation that is essential to the modern business – now perhaps their most important job is to make sure everyone else does, too.
Data security, privacy and governance are critical concerns for CIOs. The need to transform digitally, at pace, requires them to reimagine their place as the gatekeepers of all data and decentralise the report-writing function.
Download the full report ‘Closing the acceleration gap: Toward sustainable digital transformation’ for more findings from the office of the CFO, CIO and CHRO.
