CIOs: The New ‘Chief Enablers’ Of Digital Transformation
Modern-day chief information officers (CIOs) recognize that the traditional role of the IT department—supporting the back office—just skims the surface in the age of digital transformation.
The CIO role also has evolved to become customer-facing, revenue-driving, value-contributing, and, according to a CIO panel discussion at Adobe Summit, ideally suited to lead that digital transformation within an organization. The panel was moderated by Forbes CIO columnist Peter High.
“I’ve always considered myself to be a customer-facing CIO,” said Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard. “And that is really being the advocate for the customer, looking at what their pain points are, and taking that outside-in view.” For Stoddard, “customer” is defined as the people and companies buying Adobe solutions, as well as those within Adobe who turn to IT for help.
Accenture CIO Andrew Wilson, who once equated the CIO role to that of the chief experience officer, said he now sees it as the “chief orchestrator” as well.
“Think of the conductor in an orchestra,” he said. “The conductor doesn’t play an instrument, just like the CIO doesn’t actually own a lot of the IT that runs our business. But the CIO blends and integrates these things together in seamless harmony and creates something greater than the whole.”
Stoddard agreed. As the conductor, she said, the CIO enables the business, arming various lines of the organization with the tools, technology, processes, people, and mindset they need to do their jobs.
Indeed, the experts all agreed, the CIO is now the “chief enabler.”
Chief Enabler Of: Data And CXM Data is the heartbeat of any company, flowing through multiple systems and technologies, the panelists said. It’s the CIO’s job to ensure that people within the enterprise can interact and make intelligent decisions with that data.
Adobe’s move away from boxed software to cloud-based solutions has been key to more data-backed decision making within the organization, Stoddard pointed out, since the company now has more insight into how people interact with its software.
“You know who your customers are, and you can build that relationship with your customer in a different way. It becomes possible to really go along that customer journey and find out what works and what doesn’t work, and actually inject different features in that might help the customer.”
Atticus Tysen, CIO at Intuit, which also made the move to cloud-based software, agreed. Having a cloud offering enables his organization to share aggregated data back to its customers so they have better insights for decision making.
“So if you’re a driver for a ride-share company, you might get insights back on which hours are most profitable,” he explained. “Or if you’re a small-business owner, you might get a sense of which of your offerings customers are getting the most benefit from.”
CIOs also are getting more involved in customer experience, specifically in the enablement of customer experience management (CXM). For Stoddard, this means bringing all of Adobe’s data together into a single, real-time view.
“Some of the cornerstones of bringing the data together include consistency of measurement, having a governance process in place, and having the technology framework put together,” Stoddard said.
Adobe is using a data-driven operating model (DDOM) to make the most of real-time insights, she added. DDOM has essentially democratized data throughout the company, where all business lines are consistent in how they measure outcomes and how they handle taxonomy and data governance. This unified data architecture stitches together the entire customer journey, from discovery to post-purchase and renewal.
Tysen made the point that CIOs need to be monitoring the pipeline of data starting at its very source.
