Release Digital IT Brilliance

IT matters not only because it’s pervasive, but more about it continues to advance, and its nature of the "constructive disruption."

With “VUCA” digital new normal, for adapting to the increasing speed of changes, organizations have to be nimbler about updating technology and managing information. IT matters not only because it’s pervasive, but more about it continues to advance, and its nature of the "constructive disruption." At the highest level, IT becomes the game changer for the business. The faster the top leadership team understands that IT is not just technical, but rather business-driven, the better they can leverage IT to build differentiated organizational competency. But more specifically, how can IT leaders release digital IT brilliance to achieve business excellence, and unlocking the organizational potential?

Live in coherent alignment: Many IT organizations struggle to align with the business, get stuck at the lower level of organizational maturity. Alignment is fundamental and multidimensional. it’s about arrangement, alliance, fuse, collaboration, and integration, etc. Those organizations that have better alignment maturity outperform their competitors and tend to be more responsive to increasing pace of changes. To adapt to the increasing speed of changes, organizations have to be nimbler about updating technology and managing information effectively. IT can integrate all important business elements into a differentiated set of business capabilities. IT-business alignment is not only based on the business alignment of the IT leadership but also the business alignment of all the key players in the IT organization. It means that the company working as a whole to improve communication effectiveness, harness partnership, engage employees, foster innovation, and demonstrate the multidimensional business value, to ensure long-term business success. Further, the digital era is people-centric, living in coherent alignment means that digital organizations need to step up from IT-business alignment to IT-customer alignment to reflect the customer-centric trend; from inside-out operation-driven to outside-in business focus. Only by aligning the outside view with the inside view, can you understand the needs of people, but also the channels needed to support them in order to build a people-centric organization.

Seek profound Insight: Digital IT  shifts from “T” technology-heavy to “I” information-savvy. Information is useless if it is not being used to achieve the business purpose. The overwhelming growth of information brings both opportunities and risks to the business today. One of the most important IT responsibilities is about managing the exponential growth of information. The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person in the right format, at the right time, to make the right decisions. Seeking profound business insight is no doubt, the brilliant way to build a highly responsive and high-performance digital powerhouse. The companies who proactively invest in strategic information management solutions will be able to steer in the right direction and competitively move forward. To keep information flow and business flow, more attention needs to be placed on the conditions that allow information or knowledge to move around and generate business value. Understanding information context is an important step in gaining business insight. In fact, information management is not the management approach within IT scope, it’s critical to break down the silo and take a holistic approach, know the business context to enable information flow frictionlessly across the organization. It needs to be a community effort, not something that IT does alone in a corner. More precisely, it’s about seeking profound insight and creating the relevant context for solving crucial business problems.

Explore business potential: Nowadays, technology is the disruptive force behind the digital transformation and IT is the differentiated business competency. IT can either make or break a company even overnight. Organizations across the vertical sectors believe they are in the information & technology business. In the digital era, information potential directly impacts the potential of the company. Performance keeps the business moving, and the potential makes the business grow and mature. Releasing digital IT brilliance is about how to unlock the potential of the entire company.  Forward-thinking companies empower their IT organization because IT is the linchpin of weaving all important business elements such as people, processes, platforms, or technologies into organizational capability. IT can also drive all sorts of innovations - the hard innovations such as products/services/business model innovation, and soft innovations such as management/communication/ culture innovations, etc. CIOs should proactively push ideas on how to leverage IT to drive business revenue growth, increase organizational productivity, flexibility, and overall business maturity. In fact, information and technology recharge the digital business with the power to respond to change quickly and innovate relentlessly.

IT is becoming more critical strategically, and the building blocks of the business competency. The increasing speed of changes forces IT leaders to get really creative on how they architect and run a high-mature organization. Still, IT is the means to the end. The goal of releasing digital IT brilliance is about delighting customers, improving employee satisfaction, and accelerating digital transformation. CIOs should be always on the lookout for ways to improve, do more with innovation, and shape a cool organization to get digital ready.

Posted in: Digital Master,IT Transformation