A key reason for the increases in information technology and digital focused expenditure granted from the board room is because many Chief Information Officers (CIOs), and their Chief Digital Officer counterparts, are reportedly struggling to implemented cohesive and effective digital strategies for their businesses.
The increased in spending, and the driving forces behind it, come from an overview provided by Computer Weekly. This was a survey conducted of 4,000 Information Technology leaders located in 84 countries, conducted by Cass Business School’s Digital Leadership Research Center.
Here the general trend across industry is with just over half of all IT leaders polled seeing their budgets and, crucially, headcounts climb for the first time in 10 years. Based on bench marked figures this represents the highest increase reported by a majority of firms in over a decade.
Drivers for increased spending on digital solutions
The extra spend comes on top of majority of CIOs stating they are struggling to introduce a workable digital strategy across their companies. Other triggers for additional spending come from cybersecurity and privacy, with businesses within and interfacing with Europe having to contend with the additional challenge that is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
What makes for an effective digital strategy?
Four steps for developing a digital strategy:
Pinpointing opportunities (or problems) in a business where online assets can provide a solution;
Looking for unmet needs and goals of the external stakeholders, which can closely align with the main business opportunities or problems;
Putting together a clear vision as to how online assets will meet both the business and external stakeholder needs;
Prioritizing and implementing the online initiatives that are capable of delivering the vision.
In terms of what makes for an effective Digital Stratgey, Lisa Heneghan, global head of technology for management consultancy at KPMG, told Computer Weekly that it’s all about how a firm interacts with its customers: “In organizations where they are being really effective, we are starting to see CIOs thinking in that very different mindset – not thinking about the budget they control, but thinking of the impact of the things they do on the external market and their customers.”
Customers are central to the vision
The customer-centric approach to digital strategy is echoed by technology media outlet VanillaPlus, who maintain that businesses need to realign engineering, manufacturing and the supply chain areas around delivering a world-class sales and service experience for the customer. This digital strategy needs to become the essence of business strategy.
