Transformation and the role of the CIO

Digitization and Digital transformation are often used interchangeably – but as my colleague Ale Ventura, North America CIO at Unilever often reminds me, they are actually very different.?Digitization involves taking an existing process, automating it, - thereby making it faster, better, more efficient – but without really changing it or the nature of the work it delivers. Digital Transformation, on the other hand, drives a more fundamental transformation of the business, and the business model, using digital technologies - and it is true business transformation, enabled by digital.

In our recent conversation, Ale shared how they had to develop new direct to consumer distribution models for ice cream to the new and growing home streaming consumer segment once the pandemic hit and movie theaters closed. This business transformation required a new technology backplane and a fundamental model change - driven by digital.

We are also finding that Cloud, Data and AI are unlocking the opportunity for CIOs to play a key role in business transformation - a role in many ways different from what it used to be. Cloud is fundamentally re-architecting the technology backplanes of corporations to become more agile, with deeper capability, and delivering stickier experiences. Data has come to be one of the largest drivers of transformative value today. And AI is bringing augmented intelligence to the forefront of how value gets delivered.

My colleague Tom Davenport, has studied this in depth and points out that because business transformation cannot happen without fundamentally rethinking the technology architecture, it puts tremendous responsibility on technology leaders in the new normal. And CIOs now need to think of their roles as pilots and co-pilots – instead of flight engineers, as he described in a recent exchange - in that CIOs must redefine their job well beyond the IT infrastructure management and keeping the lights on - and become the very co-creators of new business models.

Digital is no longer a means of value driver for the business – it actually has become the business itself. The truth is CIOs are not only given permission to become pilots of business transformation, they are expected to do so.?