Pre-COVID, agility became an aspiration and rallying cry for organizations seeking to embrace emerging technologies and pursue technology-enabled innovation, often to stave off digital disruption in their industries. Once the pandemic hit, that nice-to-have became an existential necessity.
“As CIO, I’m constantly looking at ways to become more agile and using IT as a strategic differentiator,” says Scott duFour, global CIO at digital payment solutions company Fleetcor. “This goes beyond implementing agile methodology. It’s the ongoing assessment of how we can run our current systems more efficiently to meet our digital transformation goals.”
When all business became digital, every Organization became a technology Organization. “Organizations’ strategic goals are increasingly dependent on resilient, agile technology functions that not only support the day-to-day operations but are leading the way in new innovative solutions to streamline experiences and enable new product offerings,” says Chris Nardecchia, senior vice president and chief information and digital Officer at Rockwell Automation.
“Leaders that recognize this, want to move fast, and it does create pressure,” Nardecchia adds. “But it’s also important to recognize that pressures like these are an immense opportunity to rethink IT organizations’ strategic goals and execute a scalable architecture that expands with growing business needs.”
CIO.com talked with a range of IT leaders about their experiences optimizing IT for agility. Following are a dozen of their best tips for getting there.
The top priority for IT at Marco’s Pizza has been developing an in-house cloud-based technology platform at a time when digital ordering has grown threefold. Rick Stanbridge, executive vice president and CIO of Marco’s Pizza, extols the importance of establishing a technology foundation capable of incorporating emerging features to keep ahead of the competition.
“By housing our own data via the new order management system, we can also enable all sorts of applications both now and in the future,” says Stanbridge. “We’ll be able to pivot and plug in additional technology features for customers as they become available, such as ordering from virtual assistants, remote kiosk ordering, GPS pinpointed delivery, instant ordering via social media, and automotive app integration.”
Lines of business seeking agility in the face of rigid IT requirements have traditionally turned to “shadow IT” — technology investments not explicitly sanctioned by IT, paid for by business units to suit their needs. In an effort to support business goals, and reassert some control, IT leaders are seeking to rebalance the shadow IT equation.
For example, while the IT organization at Ricoh USA doesn’t support shadow IT, it also doesn’t demand that employees submit every request to IT if it’s something they can manage on their own.
“Yes, policy and controls must exist, but you have to also embrace a sense of flexibility to allow agility to happen,” says Bob Lamendola, Ricoh USA’s senior vice president of technology and lead of its digital services center. “By definition, you cannot be agile by forcing excessive structure. Particularly in a hybrid workforce, trying to control everything leads to lethargy and can create a perception that you’re restricting the business. This is where we need to set our IT hats aside and appreciate there’s an art to decision-making and leading an IT organization.”
Rockwell’s Nardecchia and other IT leaders are staunch supporters of automation as a means for achieving agility.
“Implementing smart automation of processes, increases the quality of outcomes, makes the organization nimble and quick to reach to changing business dynamics,” Nardecchia says.
