Driving Mutual Business Outcomes by Taking Control of Data & Technology

We are surrounded by disruption now more than ever.

Inflation, recession, geopolitical uncertainties, talent shortage and supply chain issues.

And none of us expected this to happen at the same time.?

But we have been here before. Many C-suite business leaders like yourselves once gained a lot of influence during the pandemic. Some have sustained it, and some have seen it fade away.?

Now we are heading back into turbulence, you have an opportunity not only to sustain but to increase and recover that influence. But this paper isn’t just about influence; this is about what your CEO expects from you.

Below are the four areas where CEOs are increasing their investment.

This means that at some point, your CEO or someone from your board room will ask you, “what are you doing to drive these initiatives given that there is more investment behind them?”.?

So what are you going to tell them?

Well, luckily, that’s why I’m writing this paper. I’m going to show what you can say to them.

However, there are two obstacles that you will have to cope with. IT budgets are lower than ever, and your peers believe that digital execution is slow and the time to value is even longer.?

You will prove them wrong because this is once again your moment.?

A critical area of focus is harmonising execution silos.

What does this mean? Simply put, it means that there is no such thing as a mutual business outcome. Take a look at what initiatives different members of the C-suite are prioritising in the graphic below.

Noticed anything?

Let’s take an example. One overarching initiative from CEOs (according to Gartner as of 2023) is to improve customer experience and satisfaction. Now how many of the C-suite initiatives align with this overarching initiative? Maybe 3 at most.?

There is no common business outcome. These are scattered isolated initiatives.

There is effectively a race to the finish line with each of these initiatives. But there is one commonality we can 100% agree on. Each initiative is pulled from your resources.

What does this mean for you? Well, let me ask you a few questions…

How many databases are your team members creating that are scattered across the organisation?

How many points of failure are they creating?

How many operational inefficiencies are they creating?

And on top of all that.?

If something goes wrong, who will be blamed??

You.

But that’s the exact environment that we are in right now. Most CIOs, CTOs and CDOs are labelled as service providers. You are asked to support these initiatives, and you do. If something goes wrong, they can blame it on you, and they do.

Remember, this is your moment. Stop being labelled as the service provider, and start being an executive who is in charge of technology & data.

This is the moment where you say;?

I will deliver on business outcomes,?

I will protect revenue and costs,?

I will mitigate risk across the business.

And I will do it by harmonising the scattered isolated initiatives that exist across the organisation into a common, quantifiable business outcome.

That is what your CEO expects! Their top priority for you is digitisation, but they don’t want this to come at a cost. You need to deliver this in an efficient, synergistic manner.

Before you tackle this, you need two things in place.

1. A holistic view of data estate, technology & processes
2. A core partner to co-lead this transformation with you

To summarise, delivering organisational-wide transformation and outcomes is a team sport. If you take on a project like this in isolation, therefore taking responsibility and accountability, you are labelling yourself as the service provider.