How CIOs can define software delivery through a customer lens
Repeat any word or phrase enough, and it can lose all meaning. For many years, the term “digital transformation” has felt increasingly hollow; mere window dressing for any business initiative involving digitizing existing operations. Then the pandemic hit. Suddenly, we had an obvious definition focused on areas of urgent need, such as remote working and learning, digital commerce, robotic process automation, chatbots, and cybersecurity. For organizations that acted with urgency, digital transformation has a newfound meaning and purpose moving forward.
The overnight shift to digital-first work and living forced years of digital acceleration in a matter of months, signaling the death of the multi-year transformation. Finally, after many difficulties and even failed attempts over the past decade, organizations overcame politics, bureaucracy, and fear, to march on a clear path forward to compete in a new world. The whole organization came together and oriented around one clear goal: supporting customers, and employees, as everything changed and continued to evolve in new directions. There was no choice if they wanted to fight for survival against digital Darwinism. “Adapt or die” was now the rallying cry of business and IT leaders!
The pandemic did more than disrupt how businesses work. If you flip the lens, customers also had to completely shift how they shop, for almost everything. Digital was now at the forefront of the entire customer journey, including discovery, validation, purchasing, and service and support.
Yesterday’s standards no longer applied. With digital came new behaviors, more options, and exposure to better, more intuitive digital experiences. Customers found themselves experimenting with options because their needs rapidly adapted to the intensified digital-first world. And their experiences were now the new standard of interaction, regardless of industry. McKinsey research found that 75% of customers are prioritizing digital channels during the pandemic and will likely continue to use them as the world reopens. More urgently, McKinsey also discovered that 75% of US consumers have already tried different stores, websites, or brands during the COVID-19 crisis. And, 60% of these consumers expect to integrate the new brands and stores in their post-COVID-19 lives. In other words, digital Darwinism is a clear and present danger or opportunity for growth. Your customers’ loyalty, and that of your competitors, is up for grabs.
Even before the pandemic, the status quo wasn’t working. It is estimated that by 2027, 50% of the S&P 500 companies will be replaced. In the Novel Economy — where market conditions still remain unclear and undefined — it’s imperative that line of business owners and IT continue to collaborate in a hyper-focused way. The ability to improve business agility and time-to-value hinges on this cross-functional alignment.
There may be no playbook, but there are some pages to develop for moving forward. We can build on the heroic accomplishments of 2020-2021. Your successes and failures from the past year can help guide your next steps as long as your business, and IT leadership stick together. The signs are good, with two-thirds of CIOs believing their relationship with CEOs has strengthened in the past year.
A great place to start is where your most pressing problems are from a customer perspective. If you don’t know how your product portfolio supports and retains customers, you need to baseline its performance and fast. Introduce measurement mechanisms that focus on your software-driven product value streams.
You need to define how software delivery work creates and protects value through the eyes of your customers through features (business value), defects (quality), risk (security vulnerabilities), and debt (impediments to future delivery). Crucially, ascertain how you can accelerate the flow of this work from end-to-end to meet clear customer-centric outcomes better and sooner.
