The digital CIO: Transforming the business

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Many people talk about the “digital economy,” but the real issue is how organizations transform themselves into digital businesses. That’s how organizations can win the big gains offered by the digital economy — including supercharged production, turning customers into fans, high-level collaboration, streamlined operations and energized engagements.

Embrace change

To help their organizations become digital businesses, CIOs first need to embrace the need for change. Because so much has changed so rapidly — employees, customers, technologies — these changes need to be made urgently. In a “now” world, instant gratification is the new normal, and the spoils will go to the quick. Slow-moving organizations will struggle to survive — let alone remain competitive.

What’s more, today’s digital workforce isn’t even entirely human. To be sure, organizations are struggling to serve so-called digital natives, younger employees who have grown up with always-connected smartphones and wide-reaching social media. But increasingly, the digital workforce also comprises software — virtual agents, chat bots, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning and more. These software workers are quickly gaining impressive sophistication. Consider Google’s Duplex, an experimental virtual assistant. It was recently demonstrated making surprisingly human-sounding telephone calls, scheduling a hair appointment and reserving a table at a local restaurant. The humans on the other end of the calls were unaware that they were speaking with software.

Further, changes in the human workforce represent more than a simple shift in generations. There’s also a shift in workforce models. Outsourcing work to low-wage regions, a favored strategy for the last several decades, is now giving way to bringing the work back “home,” favoring long-term expertise over short-term cost savings. For consumers, meanwhile, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Today’s consumer in, say, Chicago thinks nothing of buying a phone manufactured in China, a shirt stitched in Pakistan or a book printed in France.

In a “now” world, instant gratification is the new normal, and the spoils will go to the quick. Slow-moving organizations will struggle to survive — let alone remain competitive.

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In theory, these and other related developments should free up an organization’s human workers to focus on tasks requiring higher-level logic, emotions, empathy and creativity. In practice, however, that can happen only if the organization wholeheartedly embraces these changes and seizes the opportunities they present.

Technology is changing, too, and with it, our notion of what constitutes productivity. It might have made sense back in the 1990s for Bill Gates to memorize the license-plate numbers of Microsoft employees so he could monitor how late they worked. But not now. Similarly, back when manufacturing ruled most economies, companies wisely measured the number of widgets made each hour. But today, with many economies dominated by services, measuring widgets-per-hour is no longer useful. Even counting the number of emails an employee sends and receives each day is beside the point. What’s truly needed are new key performance indicators — KPIs that measure productivity as it’s understood in 2018 and beyond.

The delivery of technology matters, too. CIOs now need to deliver IT in ways that suit their users, empowering them for new ways of working, engagement and collaboration. Done right, workplace technology should be a pleasure to use, triggering engagement via “workplace dopamine.”

New way needed

Today IT needs to pivot, harnessing the enthusiasm of all workers for the latest, greatest technology. Users now demand change; they also want the ability to choose among not only devices but also applications. For chief information officers (CIOs), accommodating these users is vital. Yet it must be done with controls and governance. CIOs need to harness the passion while balancing user expectations. CIOs will also need to align all new technologies with their organizations’ overall business strategies, budgets and needs for security.

These kinds of changes can’t be addressed with a single project here or there; instead, they need to be made across the entire enterprise. Similarly, simply adding a chief digital officer (or other similar title) won’t be enough, either. What’s needed is a systematic organizational transformation process, one that spans people, processes and technology. Compounding the challenge, this transformation must avoid duplicating the large monolithic projects of old. Instead, it should demonstrate value to all types of users and business units as it goes, despite inevitable IT-budget constraints. In fact, such projects can even become self-funding by eliminating the need for certain capabilities. For example, a project to implement Skype might allow the organization to remove its landline desk phones.

CIOs will need to shepherd their organizations through the changes both within and outside of IT. Other C-level executives will expect the CIO to be able to clearly demonstrate the value that IT changes deliver to the business. The CIO will also need to master the art of persuasion, getting buy-in from other C-level and business-unit leaders by communicating the urgent need for change and outlining the likely benefits. CIOs are now leaders of change, but their new leadership involves influence, not edicts.

Today IT needs to pivot, harnessing the enthusiasm of all workers for the latest, greatest technology.

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Change-management is changing, too. Until recently, managing change was considered a simple project resource. Now it must become an essential function, one that captures, shapes and channels work across the organization. Also, IT must become better at product and portfolio management, transcending its traditional focus on project management alone. That’s because IT has become a portfolio of services that needs to be managed across literally thousands of users.

A larger shift is underway, too, elevating IT from an essentially invisible hardware provider to a true service partner. This means giving users the capabilities they want to become more productive at the jobs they desire. It also means understanding services, maintaining their quality and security while also being able to measure them and, eventually, improve them. At the same time, the IT group must perform a balancing act, keeping track of results and business outcomes while also addressing employee needs and concerns.

Analyze out loud

In this new approach, an organization’s employees have a new and important role to play. Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) programs are just the beginning. Employees are also driving innovation in other areas, including app personalization, open APIs and build-your-own services. These early-adopting employees can also create an “innovation engine.” Some can serve as beta testers for the IT organization. Others can help train and encourage slower adopters to use new hardware and software. Bringing employees into the IT fold is a powerful way to accelerate innovation and adoption.

Just as clearly, IT needs to embrace users’ willingness to change. Smart CIOs will listen to these users, and they’ll also be willing to “analyze out loud,” discussing and debating new approaches. To be sure, not every idea suggested by employees will be a good one. But the days are over when a CIO could simply ignore or summarily dismiss those user requests. Today that approach will cause users to lose interest and to dismiss IT. CIOs ignore users at their own risk.

New productivity measures are needed, too. In today’s workplace, productivity means different things to different roles and mind-sets. Traditionally, productivity has been a measure of output per unit of input. But in a service economy, the nature of both outputs and inputs can vary widely. Devices, apps and data have accelerated the pace of workflow. Ubiquitous connectivity enables employees to work from wherever they want, whenever they want, blurring the borders around the workplace and work hours.

As a result, the traditional notion of “one worker, one job” is becoming obsolete. In its place are new types of occupations, more granular and task-oriented. In today’s fast-rising “gig economy,” jobs of all types — including full-time positions with large organizations — require task-juggling, collaboration with different stakeholders and the use of performance metrics.

Also needed are new ways to measure the performance of IT. CIOs now need to determine how well their IT groups are meeting user expectations. Surveys are one traditional approach. But low response rates — and accompanying high margins of error — can limit their usefulness. New approaches are clearly needed.

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Bright future, but …

IT leaders stand at the cusp of a new opportunity. The future is bright, and employees are eager to be part of it. The digital workplace can reinvigorate and empower employees to new levels, giving them access to the right information and insights — quickly, efficiently and effectively. With the right applications and devices, employees can also become highly productive in the right environment. Collaboration can become frictionless, too. New and emerging technologies can help employees find not only the right information, but also the right people. The same technologies also help them connect and form teams that work quickly and accurately.

However, to lead this change, the IT organization needs to modernize itself. CIOs have already begun to shed many of the notions of the last century. Now they need to continue this evolution by adopting a highly personalized computing paradigm, one that’s focused on activities and maximizes productivity. By embracing employees’ desire for change, IT can gain popularity as the productivity and business enabler. Working together, IT and employees can remove the barriers separating processes, data, applications and devices. They can also automate much of today’s drudgery, bringing an excellent user experience to new areas.

In so doing, IT will also create a “fan base” among employees willing to help IT innovate across the whole business. It’s important for IT to prioritize the user experience, personalization, frictionless processes and bulletproof security. But perhaps the most important thing the CIO can do is to create fans, listen to the workforce, analyze openly and then implement.

About DXC Technology

DXC Technology (DXC: NYSE) is the world’s leading independent, end-to-end IT services company, serving nearly 6,000 private and public-sector clients from a diverse array of industries across 70 countries. The company’s technology independence, global talent and extensive partner network deliver transformative digital offerings and solutions that help clients harness the power of innovation to thrive on change. DXC Technology is recognized among the best corporate citizens globally. For more information, visit www.dxc.technology.

© 2018 DXC Technology Company. All rights reserved. MD_8840a-19. August 2018www.dxc.technology

Learn more at www.dxc.technology/workplace_and_mobility

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