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Be the hero

By CIO Council of South Africa
Johannesburg, 20 Jul 2016

Every good movie tells a story about characters undertaking a journey, whether it's an actual journey to find a treasured item, a personal journey to seek revenge, a metaphorical journey through relationships or a narrative journey such as ridding the city of bad guys. As organisations move through their journey of digital transformation, they need leaders to play these key character roles. Undoubtedly, CIOs and CMOs are being put forward as two such heroes, says the CIO Council of South Africa.

The CIO, for obvious reasons, has a handle on the technology and knows what's possible, while the CMO represents the business' engagement with customers and is deemed astute enough to spot commercial opportunities. This 'Digital Duo' is increasingly being required to work together to ensure the company strives, not just survives, in what are economically challenging times. The merging of cloud, mobility, analytics, social technologies and IOT have created a backdrop where technology enables business innovation, such as finding new revenues streams or evolving to new business models. Coinciding with this move is the increased empowerment of customers, and businesses needing to change their positioning so that they can be more responsive to the demands of their customers.

As the CIO and CMO move to collaborate more closely, their relationship will evolve. Engagement, mutual understanding and communication will be key. For CMOs, the experience will involve learning what the business' technology is capable of producing and understanding what's involved to meet delivery timeframes, while the CIO will need to better understand the requirements of the marketing department and assemble a clearer picture of the wider business. And, of course, transformation will likely impact the wider business in time.

With a strengthened relationship, the Digital Duo will need to spread their influence to their fellow C-suite heroes to empower the digital change across the business, in terms of the technology and business processes, but also helping to transform the organisation's culture and employee mindset. In this issue of Transformer, we look at some of the key aspects that CIOs should consider when looking to help drive the digital transformation across your business, and partner with CMOs. I believe this is becoming an increasingly pertinent area for CIOs and I hope you find the content in these pages interesting and informative.

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Editorial contacts

Ulrike Weitz
CIO Council of South Africa
uweitz@microsoft.com