Image: Gartner
Gartner says digital business has reached a tipping point in just last one year as enterprises scale their digital capabilities. Digitalization is now the number one priority for CIOs in both private and public sector organizations.
A recent CIO survey by Gartner finds that 33% of CIOs have taken strong initiatives to reach digital scale, up from 17% in 2018. 49% of CIOs said that their business model has already changed or is in state of changing. Whereas, 55% of organizations have already moved from project to product delivery.
The 2019 CIO Agenda Report by Gartner lists key areas to help organizations learn from top-performers and refine their strategies:
Change the business model
The next 5 years are going to be a massive change for organizations driven by digital transformation. CIOs are working on their IT strategies involving products and offerings which is forcing them to completely re-write their IT operating model to be a digital enterprise.
CIOs need to practice the skills to lead the ongoing digital change and transform their organization’s business approach. They have to shift the focus of their organizations from ‘what they sell’ to ‘how they sell’.
Keep the customer at the center
CIOs should find ways to engage their customers by delivering a superior quality experience throughout the customer life cycle.
According to the report, 89% of top performers favour consumer metrics as indicators of success.
“Ultimately, CIOs should focus on being able to baseline business outcomes such as customer retention and time to market to measure the impact of their investments through hypothesis-driven projects,” says Sanil Solanki, Senior Director, Analyst, Gartner Research.
Build trust, secure customer data
Top performers understand the content and source of customer data, as well as the risk involved with it. CIOs believe that there is a need to implement proper standards to provide security and privacy to the customers.
Overall, CIOs believe that strong security and authentication are highly important, more than convenience and usability.
Adopt a product-centric approach
Gartner says that more than half of the CIOs are moving from project to product delivery.
Flexibility is significant for business model transformation in this digital era. To succeed, CIOs must adopt product-centric model that builds trust within the organization as it creates funds that are based on business outputs as well as on the delivery of incremental results.
CIOs must embrace this approach and structure their IT model into productivity-based approach, delivering new business value to customers.
Re-balance business and IT processes
A digital business relies on sound IT, a combination of new and transformational technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI). The choices made by CIOs are critical for the success of their organizations.
There is a need to improve and rebalance the business and IT processes, offer innovative and transformative solutions, improve customer experience, and deliver results.
“Projects will only succeed where there is significant resource investment, and probabilistic models depend on significant investment in data authority and scope,” said Whit Andrews, Distinguished VP, Analyst, Gartner Research.
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