FINAL WORD
“
THE TRANSFORMATIONAL
CIO IS INSTIGATING A SEISMIC
SHIFT IN BUSINESS THAT IS SEEING
TECHNOLOGY BECOME A DEFINING,
DIFFERENTIATING STRATEGIC TOOL
THAT CAN DRIVE SUCCESS.
business, delivering new capabilities
to every executive leader and opening
up new pathways to success for sales,
marketing, finance and more. The
transformational CIO must build
strong relationships with each of these
leaders, and work with them closely to
understand how technology can help
to overcome their unique challenges
and achieve their specific goals.
Then, the CIO should go a step further;
using their cross-silo expertise to
recommend enterprise-wide solutions
that will have a positive impact on
multiple parts of the business.
3. Find opportunities to
transform
Software as a Service alternatives. Another
relatively simple transformation is shifting a
part, or all, of the development and testing
environment to cloud, which can free up
budget and introduce more agility into the
development process.
4. Commit to recruiting and retaining
great talent
With technology evolving at a rapid
pace, having the right human resources
is essential. Unfortunately, tech talent
shortages continue to be a challenge, with
a software skills survey by Wits University’s
Joburg Centre for Software Engineering
(JCSE) highlighting the ongoing reality
of South Africa’s ICT skills gap. The good
news is that because digital transformation
touches all parts of the business,
transformational CIOs have the unique
opportunity to tap new sources of talent;
for example, bringing on a candidate with
a humanities degree and helping them
learn tech skills on the job.
With a creative, committed approach to
recruiting, retaining and upskilling talent,
the CIO can build a team of left- and right-
brained people who not only understand
the technology, but see how it can be
holistically applied to lower costs and drive
business growth.
5. Act as a visionary
Niral Patel, MD and Technology Leader, Oracle
South Africa
must look beyond the technology and
delve deep into the overall direction of
the business, in order to ensure their
transformational ideas are closely in line
with the aims of top executives.
“
Whether the business direction is winning a
new customer segment, expanding
into another market or reducing
operational overheads, by
aligning their IT strategy, the
CIO will be best positioned to win
buy-in and budget for projects.
2. Avoid a siloed approach
The best digital transformation
approaches cut across lines of
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INTELLIGENTCIO
No CIO wants just to ‘keep the
lights on’, and as such must actively
seek out opportunities to digitally
transform the business. These don’t
have to be huge projects; in fact, the
most effective transformations – and the
projects most likely to win budget – often
start small. For example, a CIO might test
out a new development approach and
rethink the development processes, as the
first step in achieving a long-term goal of
moving away from on-premise applications
and toward using cloud-based
Being a visionary is potentially the most
important trait of the transformational
CIO. He or she must approach their role
with a strong vision for how IT can secure
the future of the business; connect the
dots across all aspects of the enterprise
to demonstrate which technology will
enable digital transformation, and how that
transformation will put the business on a
path to success.
Rather than waiting around to support
other departments’
digital initiatives, the
transformational CIO
takes a proactive stance by
continually looking to the
future, and asking “What’s
coming next, and what can
my team and I do to lead
the business through the
waves of change?” n
BEING A VISIONARY
IS POTENTIALLY THE MOST
IMPORTANT TRAIT OF THE
TRANSFORMATIONAL CIO.
www.intelligentcio.com