How CIOs can build on the pandemic’s momentum

The chief infor­ma­tion offi­cer (CIO) has been mis­con­ceived by too many com­pa­nies as the per­son in charge of mak­ing sure the com­put­ers keep work­ing. The pan­dem­ic has changed that.

After a year when work­ing from home has become the norm, the CIO and a company’s IT team have been the cav­al­ry charg­ing over the hill to ensure busi­ness­es could oper­ate. The task for CIOs now is to keep up that momen­tum and not just go back to being the per­son who makes sure lap­tops can “talk” to print­ers. 

Robert Tea­gle, CIO at car auc­tion firm BCA, which also oper­ates WeBuyAny­Car and Cinch, believes this is best achieved by har­ness­ing the pos­i­tive new light the role is seen in and align­ing the depart­ment with future growth plans. 

“It’s been like a snow­ball; the move to dig­i­tal was always mov­ing along slow­ly and then the pan­dem­ic meant it sud­den­ly raced down the hill,” he says. “We can’t keep it going at that pace for much longer, but we do need to keep it going. We do need to help com­pa­nies dig­i­tal­ly trans­form, so the CIO role, and the team they lead, has to show it is absolute­ly cru­cial to growth.”

Tea­gle talks about pace from a qual­i­fied van­tage point. A year ago the split between dig­i­tal and face-to-face auc­tion sales was 70–30, in favour of auc­tions. With­in a year, this had to shift to 100 per cent dig­i­tal sales. When lock­down is fin­ished, Tea­gle sees a clear role in keep­ing the dig­i­tal process mov­ing at pace by remov­ing remain­ing bar­ri­ers. At the moment he has ensured the BCA part of the process is dig­i­tal, the next project is to make sure the paper­work on the sell­ing and the buy­ing side fol­lows suit so the entire process can run more smooth­ly.

Offering a seamless customer experience

Remov­ing these bar­ri­ers in the cus­tomer jour­ney is where CIOs should be look­ing very close­ly to make a dif­fer­ence, accord­ing to Louise Bunting, CIO at dat­a­cen­tre oper­a­tor Yon­dr Group. In her expe­ri­ence, even when sys­tems are dig­i­talised, too many com­pa­nies have invest­ed in appli­ca­tions that are suit­ed to a par­tic­u­lar task, but are not inte­grat­ed with­in the wider busi­ness. While they might work, they do so in iso­la­tion, rather than as a seam­less jour­ney for cus­tomers.

To show the true worth of the role, she believes CIOs need to stop think­ing about an appli­ca­tion for every process they need to facil­i­tate. Instead, they need to con­sid­er how they can remove a series of inter­nal oper­a­tional steps and offer a smooth cus­tomer jour­ney. 

“We have to break down the silos cre­at­ed by rows of appli­ca­tions that each per­form a spe­cif­ic task,” she says. “CIOs need to join up the process­es at their busi­ness so cus­tomers get a seam­less jour­ney. Inter­act­ing with com­pa­nies has to be intu­itive. True dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion means a great expe­ri­ence with as few touch­points as pos­si­ble.”

To get to this posi­tion, Bunting believes CIOs need to change how they are per­ceived in their organ­i­sa­tion and to do that they need to change their own atti­tudes first. 

“We have to stop being seen as the depart­ment that says ‘no’ too often or ‘that’s too dif­fi­cult’,” she sug­gests. “We have to build trust by say­ing something’s chal­leng­ing, but we’ll get it cracked if we work with the own­er of the issue and the oper­a­tion teams. It’s a two-way process. We have to be proac­tive and build that trust if we’re to raise the pro­file of the CIO.” 

Aligning with growth plans

For CIOs look­ing to retain their hero sta­tus, the pan­dem­ic has done more than show the val­ue of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in keep­ing com­pa­nies oper­a­tional. It has also offered up some warn­ing signs for com­pa­nies as they build for a future when lock­down rules are removed. 

Those push­ing for change now have exam­ples of what hap­pens to busi­ness­es that are not ready to trade dig­i­tal­ly and Lyn Grob­ler, CIO at insur­ance com­pa­ny How­den Group, believes they should not be afraid to ref­er­ence them.

“If you need an exam­ple of how impor­tant dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is, you just need to think how Top­shop didn’t want to put the nec­es­sary invest­ment into dig­i­tal to ‘do an ASOS’ and then think about who end­ed up being in a posi­tion to buy them,” she says. 

Her advice is for CIOs to tap into this con­cern of what hap­pens to busi­ness­es that do not com­mit to trans­for­ma­tion and then work through the chief exec­u­tive, wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, to align their vision of growth with what dig­i­tal can offer.  This gets round the age-old prob­lem of the role being defined more by whom it reports to than what it can achieve.

“If you’re a CIO report­ing to the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer, you’ll only have con­ver­sa­tions about oper­a­tions and if you’re report­ing to the chief finan­cial offi­cer, you’re only ever going to be asked to reduce costs,” she says. “The trick is to get in front of the chief exec­u­tive and see what they want to achieve to grow the busi­ness. You have to be entre­pre­neur­ial and see how you can proac­tive­ly fit in and deliv­er that growth.”

Going beyond a digital coat of paint

This tac­tic of being proac­tive rather than reac­tive, look­ing for ways to make a com­pa­ny more agile and make cus­tomer jour­neys smoother is how Arthur Hu, CIO of tech com­pa­ny Leno­vo, believes the role will rise in promi­nence. 

He pre­dicts many organ­i­sa­tions are going to be more recep­tive to dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­pos­als as mar­kets emerge from lock­down. This is root­ed, he believes, in too many busi­ness­es real­is­ing the “we still have more time, we still have more run­way” atti­tude did not work out well when the pan­dem­ic struck. 

The good news for any CIO is many C‑suites will now realise their cul­ture has to change to embrace dig­i­tal because, as they have found out, it is the best way to pre­pare for an uncer­tain future. The pos­i­tive devel­op­ments come with a warn­ing, though, for any exec­u­tives not com­mit­ted to going “all in” on fun­da­men­tal change.  

“You can’t slap a coat of paint on some­thing and call it trans­for­ma­tion,” he says. “The CIO has to be the inte­gra­tor for cus­tomer expe­ri­ence; you need to use data across the whole expe­ri­ence to make it seam­less and inter­ac­tive. You also have to build an archi­tec­ture that can adapt because, as we’ve seen this past year, huge change can hap­pen at any time and you need to be able to adapt.”

Building teams around the CIO

For com­pa­nies that want to stream­line their cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, the advice from BCA’s Tea­gle is that a suc­cess­ful CIO needs to build the right team around them. For him, this does not mean look­ing to recruit sole­ly from peo­ple already in the sec­tor, but to bring in new ideas from oth­er indus­tries. 

“We want to get away from a stan­dard ‘vanil­la’ expe­ri­ence to offer some­thing with the con­ve­nience and fun of buy­ing some­thing on Ama­zon or book­ing a hol­i­day online,” he says. “We have retail and trav­el IT experts onboard because they’re going to help us think dif­fer­ent­ly. When you think about it, pick­ing up a car is just like click and col­lect at a shop, so we’re build­ing a team with exper­tise in these areas.”

It is clear that keep­ing up the momen­tum for the CIO is not just about tech­nol­o­gy. It will start with align­ing the role with a company’s growth plans, while offer­ing seam­less jour­neys to the cus­tomers it aims to attract. It also involves get­ting the right peo­ple in place who can bring new ideas to help sup­port the CIO role and main­tain its cur­rent high-pro­file sta­tus.