The CIO: Where Do We Stand Today?

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From the course by CentraleSupélec

Two Speed IT: How Companies Can Surf the Digital Wave, a BCG Perspective

123 ratings

CentraleSupélec

Two Speed IT: How Companies Can Surf the Digital Wave, a BCG Perspective

123 ratings

Transform or disappear, the Darwinism of IT: In order to adapt to a digital world, a two-speed IT is needed. Despite the importance of IT in today’s digital world, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) often struggle to get their voices heard by executive committees. Faced with this challenge, IT departments are being forced to reinvent themselves to adapt their companies to the fast paced evolution of technology. The Boston Consulting Group has developed a business approach that allows IT to shed off its appearance of a heavy cost center and to adopt a new, more realistic persona as a quality service provider, partnering with users and the management. Would you be a professional, a student in engineering, a student in a business schools or would you just be interested in digital transformation and its implications on IT, Learn with three BCG experts why and how to manage an IT department as a business in order to transform a company and adapt it to a digital world. Join the conversation: #2SpeedIT

From the lesson

IT and the CIO in the Digital World

There is a gap between what we observed about IT in companies and what is actually needed. Some best practice examples will be given.

The Darwinism of IT5:00

Three Big Challenges for the IT Department Today 3:43

The IT Department Is a Business in Itself3:43

The CIO: Where Do We Stand Today?3:52

The CIO Is a Business Manager6:05

The CIO Sits at the Table of the Managers3:31

The Five Different Roles of the CIO2:26

Meet the Instructors

Antoine Gourévitch
Senior Partner and Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group
Vanessa Lyon
Partner and Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group
Eric Baudson
Managing Director at The Boston Consulting Group

[MUSIC]

The CIO, where do we stand today?

I will illustrate these tough questions with two stories.

First one in the automotive industry.

In the automotive industry, IT is becoming at the core of the performance of a car.

But even more, if you look at people

who will start their car in a few years, they will all use their smartphones.

So the question of a CEO of the car company is, in Germany,

when two million of my consumer will start their car at 7 AM in the morning.

Beats freezing our nuts.

How do we make sure that we have the right IT infrastructure that will support,

and is it going to be enough for that?

And this is an antique question, and a very tough one.

When we discussed this topic with the CEO,

we suggested to him that he should speak with is CIO.

And he said no.

I don't trust my CIO to do that.

I want to do it with R&D and my CIO should be on the back office of things.

We don't believe this is the best view,

because the CIO has a good understanding of the data.

But that was the position of the CEO.

A similar story is in the consumer good industry.

The executive committee understood that this projection was wrong and

when they wanted to make progress in the supply chain,

there are some things that everyone else would have done.

That the finals guy, the production guy, and

the sales guy, put them in the same rooms and started to discuss.

Why are we out of stock?

Why do we have lonely time or delays?

And after one day, I mean, the truth came out.

And what was the truth?

It was that everyone was with data, of course.

That it's own data.

And the data collection was not current with the data of finance and

not current with the data of sales.

So, the executive decision that said,

we need to have a common knowledge and we need to share the data.

So, what we need to do is add the CEO drive to this, because the CEO

is the only one who understands and who sees all the data of the company.

They appointed a new CIO coming from business head of operations.

And basically head of supply chain, and

increase the outputs of the supply chain by a factor of three.

Then the competitive advantage.

You can see in these two stories, you have two different positioning from the CIO.

On the one hand, one CIO says,

I want my CIO as director of IT purchases, making sure you optimize IT unit costs.

Making sure he coordinate with IT suppliers.

That's one positioning.

Another positioning would be, I want to have a CIO who's a businessman.

Well versed on some business, with contributing to the company strategy.

And someone who both understands the technical part of IT and

the business part of IT.

What is right or what is wrong?

We would argue very strongly that in a digital world,

you need to have a business manager as head of IT.

That means an IT executive with some business skills and with a leader.

Our businessman will also have some understanding about IT.

But what is very important is to have a team that can combine

both IT understanding, business leadership.

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