Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Is Digital IT Extraordinary

IT is a Holistic 'Digital Brain' of Organization. 


3/12 is the World Wide Web’s 25th birthday, now about half of world citizens are also ‘net citizens’ to connect, create and share content online, it becomes the very foundation of all digital activities and the very fabric of digital business and world. As an IT leader, what’s your perspective on the future of Information Technology, is digital IT extraordinary or ordinary?


Digital IT should add more strategic advantage: IT can either make or break a company, IT strategy now becomes an integral component of business strategy, as more often than not, technology is the driver for business innovation. And history reveals that IT needs to be understood and harnessed by all stakeholders— to fulfill its potential and strategic importance as a differentiator of companies. For example, there are a lot of business success factors including culture, and IT can be the most effective and the least expensive option to reinforce high-performing culture. The trend of IT consumerization indeed provides unprecedented opportunities for IT to get more touch base with end customers, and empower employees as well, IT acts more as an ‘orchestrator,’ to conduct an information-mature, customer-centric digital organizations.

Digital IT focal point: The focus of IT needs to get back to its root--the big "I" as Information, Intelligence, Innovation, Integration, and Improvement, in order to improve its maturity. It means IT should spend more resources on crafting unique business capabilities and capturing business growth opportunities, beyond "keeping the lights on." In this regard, digital IT should gain more strength as an innovation engine and governance champion. IT organizations need to focus on value and capability building. It will mean that the enterprise view, customer contact, GRC and vendor management are the most important elements of an IT organization. Both information and technology become the key ingredient in building business capabilities that differentiate the company from its competition in supporting the company objectives.

IT as a holistic ‘digital brain’ of business: Metaphorically, IT is more like organization’s "brain," at the industrial age, IT is perhaps more like "left brain" only, rational, machine-like, and a bit isolated, it is easy to get disrupted by digitalization, while digital IT needs to become a whole brain, to embrace right hemisphere's color, creativity, and connection, to unleash the technology potential and capture the business's "Eureka Moment” –the growth or innovation opportunities, and help build a more creative and productive working atmosphere for today’s digital workforce.  

Cloud IT is not cloudy: Cloud provides the leverage for IT to optimize strategy and execution and brings significant opportunity for business to leap through digital transformation. IT is not going away, rather there are opportunities for IT to deliver solutions faster via enablement by viable cloud solutions, and hence faster means more business solutions can be solved in the long run. The use of a cloud solution is one of many choices that an organization should consider in using information and technology to manage digital transformation for the long term; at the implementation level, IT provides important structure and framework to streamline business processes and enable the digital transformation

 CIO leadership goes to ‘plus’ or ‘beyond’: CIOs as a C-level business leader, do need shift mindset to become a business strategist, not only draw the solid IT roadmap but also co-create the business strategy, to see things differently either via architecture, customer, process, or disruptive innovation lens. to fill the gap at the big table and contribute to business planning. IT talent should take an extra mile with intellectual inquisitiveness to understand more about business, and forward-thinking organizations should empower their CIOs and IT to unleash their potential. with the end goal to achieve a high-performance business result,  as more often than not, technology is a creative disruptor for the upcoming opportunities for business growth. 

The traditional IT at the industrial speed --the one only keeps the light on is perhaps shrinking, however, digital IT should be more robust and anti-fragile than ever. The digital world is so data-driven and so information-intensive, technology needs will only expand, and most likely expand hyperbolically; IT should play even more crucial roles as a service broker, value-creator, digital orchestrator and governance champion. IT just needs to adjust to the digital speed, wired (or wireless) to change and take a leadership role in navigating digital transformation.








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