Digital transformation: A CXO’s guide
This ebook, based on the latest ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature, looks at some of the ways companies are building innovative strategies to enhance customer experience, optimize internal processes, develop new business models, and tap into the benefits of technologies like AI, IoT, automation, and analytics.
From the ebook:
The advantage of working in IT is that you are usually well ahead of digital and computing technology information and adoption curves. The downside of this is that you often understand the value propositions of a new technology before your colleagues do.
The quandary for the CIO, then, is how to get buy-on from the CEO and other key stakeholders in the organization for technologies that you regard as essential to the business.
To consider this question at closer range, let’s look at digital transformation.
TechRepublic recently conducted a poll of CIOs, and more than half said their company doesn’t have a formal digital transformation strategy. “Our business supports constantly varying needs from a shifting pool of clients,” said poll respondent David Wilson, director of IT services at VectorCSP. “We embrace opportunities for digital transformation when they present themselves, but would not have a clear path for such a formal plan overall.”
Does initial buy-in require a formal plan?
Such a fragmented approach to digital transformation seems like a recipe for disaster, but is it?
With digital transformation, it just might be possible that the usual steps that CIOs take, like recommending solutions and approaches for technology introduction and adoption, constructing a rolling three year plan for implementation in specific business areas, calculating estimated ROI (return on investment), budgeting for all of this, and then selling it to the CEO and others, isn’t needed–at least not right away.