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CIO’s Role in Implementing Digital Transformation

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The Chief Information Officer (CIO) is responsible for the organization’s move towards digital transformation. A CIO has to take initiative and decide what approach the firm is going to take to achieve digital transformation. It is a challenging task because, given current circumstances, technology is changing at a fast pace and customers expect more from companies.

A CIO has to keep innovating and rethinking ideas that they have already implemented and find new ways to achieve the organization’s digital transformation goals. A CIO’s role in the process includes

  • Collaboration on digital strategies
  • Lead organization change
  • Drive agile practices
  • Carry pilots and experiments with innovative technologies

What are the Key Roles of CIOs in Implementing Digital Transformation?

Today, CEOs look to the CIOs to drive digital transformation and create revenue-generating ideas for the business. Roles of CIOs in implementing successful digital transformation include the following:

  • Working on the bigger picture
  • Driving foolproof transformation
  • Handling change resistance
  • Innovating on training methods
  • Fortifying network security

Working on the bigger picture

Adjusting the timeline and budget while implementing digital transformation has been CIOs’ major area of concern. To prevent long-term projects from becoming stagnant, they need to be reset quite a few times. Dividing the projects into parts has helped deliver better value than if it was taken up all at once.

Another area that can hinder CIOs from initiating digital transformation is finding a way to leverage the enterprise’s existing resources better. IT teams play a major role in present-day businesses since organizations are trying to leverage their data assets to become more customer-centric, agile, and competitive by making data-driven decisions, faster.

Driving foolproof transformation  

CIOs must understand why customers buy their products or subscribe to their service. They must learn what other alternatives are available to the customer and how they can deliver the best quality. They must make use of AI to automate redundant tasks, analyze usage of the enterprise’s tech stack, and find inefficacy in their practices to quickly address them.

Driving Full-proof-transformation

Companies are starting to implement new tech at a rapid rate in order to empower their workforce and keep them prepared for any drastic change to the industry. In this fast-paced environment, companies either adapt to the digital change or eventually, perish.

Since CIOs are responsible for adopting new digital systems at the organization, they must stay on their toes to look out for the latest digital innovations in the industry. They must make sure the Digital Transformation efforts are fool-proof by experimenting new technologies that seem beneficial, gathering feedback, and providing assistance at any time of need.

Handling change resistance

A challenging part of implementing digital transformation is handling employee’s push back towards the change. Employee resistance can cause disruptions in your digital transformation process and can also affect the established process.

Handling-Change-Resistance

According to Forbes, 70% of change programs fail outright, largely due to employees change resistance. Sometimes, if a majority of the workforce is not ready for the change, then maybe it’s the change model that needs fixing. Leaders must carefully handle employee resistance to make their transformation efforts successful. 

Communication is key. You must educate the employees about the benefits of the change. Motivate them by showing them the value they provide to the organization.

Innovating training methods

Training the workforce to be digitally updated is the kind of investment that requires a lot of expertise. Digital transformation will bring along its own set of technical challenges. You will need the right personnel job and the right training methods to stay ahead of the game.

Getting new technologies to gain competitive advantage can be expensive and can sometimes backfire if not planned and executed well. The business fundamentals have to align with the features that the new tech provides. Once a tool is chosen, employees have to be trained on how to use it. Traditional training methods have quickly become outdated and ineffective, especially for a remote workforce.

According to Christian Velitchkov, COO and Co-founder of twiz,  

“Training is no longer limited to face-to-face meetings. Digital Adoption Platforms can help here. With the right DAP, the time taken by users to be eloquent in new tech decreases, and morale increases.”

Fortifying network security

A CIO’s key challenge includes transforming the perception of security from an IT issue to a business issue. Business executives think that security-related issues only concern the IT department.

Fortifying-network-security

This mindset needs to change so that people take ownership of the risks that they create and they take ownership of the business’ security. CIO needs to ensure that the security base of your company is strong enough.

While implementing digital transformation, a CIO’s primary competency is to coordinate and oversee IT systems. CIOs face many challenges such as ensuring that all legacy systems are integrated into one data warehouse and reducing costs by leveraging cloud computing for infrastructure and application services.

The solution has always been to collaborate across functional boundaries and increasing transparency while providing abundant resources. This is made possible with the partnership between business leaders, strategists, vendors, and employees in the company.

CIOs can leverage the latest technologies like Digital Adoption Platforms that can help their digital transformation dreams come true. A DAP like Apty enables your employees to get trained in applications that they use and helps in seamless adoption of the entire tech stack.

Apty can provide the best onboarding and training experience to your remote workforce with its in-app guidance features. CIOs can consider Apty to get the best possible outcome from their employees and achieve successful digital transformation.

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Nathan Altadonna

Nathan Altadonna

A former journalist and product manager, Nathan is a proud tech geek who blogs about digital transformation, employee productivity, and enterprise software. In addition to his work with Apty, Nathan runs his own consulting company, Innate Digital, helping companies develop content and get the most out of their marketing tech stack.

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