With rising competition, operational cost & IT Budget going down in recent years, CIOs & CMOS have a very critical role in increasing enterprise productivity by harnessing existing limited IT resources intelligently & efficiently, connecting employees & bringing workplace efficiency. Technology leaders should bring digital transformation & encourage its adoption in organizations to enable connectivity between people, processes, products, platforms & partners.
For an interconnected enterprise, staying connected and relevant with ever-changing business models and product lines becomes possible by embracing solutions powered by social, mobile, cloud, and analytics. Every piece of data generated by people, devices, or systems, is precious as it leads to meaningful information for an organization which could be exploited for a competitive edge, so it's important that data, in terms of email, chats, documents, images, reports, and forms is properly managed, kept secure and is continuously analyzed to draw meaningful information leading to valued business decisions in a cost-effective manner.
IT leaders should invest in the right tools and frameworks to simplify information flows and workplace transformation to bring Transparency, Visibility, Agility, Speed, Predictability, Consistency, and Sustainable output in delivery practices. As an organization, it is important to be Lean in terms of people and infra to stay competitive. As an IT leader, we should promote a paperless or green organization as it's digital, cost-effective, efficient, better managed, easily lockable, and leads to better communication and greater customer satisfaction.
Investing in innovation and automation, building microservices (API), Backend-as-a-Service (Baas), responsive design, etc. assuring productivity through operational efficiency and services availability. IT should enable collaboration between teams, geographies and choosing right talent and partners to increase efficiency, productivity and building seamless, enriched end-user experience and engagement. CMOS should strategize around Security, Compliance, Access Control, Awareness and Trainings to reduce risks and keep long run expenses and costs in control.
Putting a framework and repository for content and Knowledge Management to encourage re-usability and innovation proves very handy for any organization. Enabling HR processes, employee work assignments and reporting, approvals, leaves and attendance, expense management, incentive plans, ERA settings, and appraisal processes on an integrated digital platform seamlessly and securely accessible across multiple channels would bring speed and efficiency.
CXO should build IT landscape around users rather than the traditional ways of focusing first on services, tools and platforms. Invest in Apps, IoT and Tools to provide insights into sales and performance, enabling business processes streamlining and data-driven decision-making rather than going with gut feeling to ensure that users across the value chain are better aligned with the business objectives. IT leaders always look out for areas and operational/ business processes needs to be streamlined.
Repetitive tasks like generating reports, recording customer complaints, maintaining release process, manual audit, in-warding, and outwarding inventories checklists, invoices, credit notes, carrying surveys, collecting feedback, etc. lead to monotonous and unproductive workplace making employees unhappy, prone to manual errors and inefficiencies. Also, should encourage process management organizations to ensure that the projects and initiatives are following the best practices and processes, and being executed in a cost-effective manner.
Mobility initiatives like BYOD go a long way to increasing productivity, bringing high level of Employee satisfaction, customer engagement, and retention by providing flexibility to any channel (or device), anytime, anywhere. Making enterprise mobile enabled is the way to go!!
The CXO has a vital strategic role to enable IT to help transform the organization into a digitally interconnected workplace, with enhanced processes and productive workforce and a big stimulus to be more competitive and cost-effective in the intense competition of today’s economy.
You must be logged in to post a comment.