Abstract
Organisations are increasingly attempting to digitally transform their business models. Effective management of these new-age business models requires specific skills. In this regard, among all the C-suite leaders, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is the most impacted. The role itself is getting transformed from traditional infrastructure and application management to becoming a strategic business partner. As a result, expectations from the CIOs have increased manifold though many organisations remain dissatisfied with the delivery of digital transformation. Thus, specific to CIO role perspective, both in practice and literature, there exists a gap between what is expected versus what is delivered. To address this gap, through this study in context of digital transformation (DT), the authors deliberate on how the role of the CIO is transforming, outlining novel responsibilities and vital leadership skills that will be perquisite to contribute effectively for the future CIO position.
TopIntroduction
In today's dynamic environment, organisations are significantly impacted by the changes happening in their surroundings. These changes or disruptions come from a variety of factors involving their macro and micro environments. As a response to these environmental disruptions, the organisations innovate new ways of doing business. Businesses are increasingly adopting the new age digital technologies to transform their business by establish better customer relationships, to accelerate new product designs and to create new revenue streams (Yoo et al., 2012; Hinterhuber & Nilles, 2021). This adoption of digital technologies is continuously reframing their legacy business processes, resulting in the adoption of new business models by generating novel customer insights, designing personalized offerings, collaborating with suppliers for cost-effective and efficiently networked digital supply chain (Huang et al. 2014), and for mechanizing the operations by robotic process automation (Sjodin et al., 2018). In effect, the digital technologies have started driving the way modern businesses operate.
A Chief Information Officer (CIO) survey conducted by Constellation Research (Hinchcliffe, 2020) reports that digital transformation remains the top priority in terms of budget allocation, with more than three-fourth of surveyed reporting it as their utmost priority. Similarly, a survey of the manufacturing industry conducted by IndustryWeek (2021) suggests that more than 70 percent are in the process of digital transformation. The dynamic external environmental exigencies provide further impetus to digital transformation. Given such a level of urgency and importance given by the industry, this chapter looks at the crucial role of CIO in the smart management of digital transformation.
Digital Transformation (DT) entails the development of digital business models that enable new approaches for capturing corporate value based on data-driven insights (Davenport & Harris, 2017; Ross et al., 2016; Pagani, 2013), generated in real-time by digital devices. Porter and Heppelmann (2015) emphasise the importance of these high-end smart and connecting devices in revolutionising the products design and usage. This unique aspect of DT differentiates it from IT-enabled business transformation, where the focus is mostly on system automation rather than reinventing the business (Proctor, 2017, Wessel et al., 2021, Chawla and Goyal, 2021). New age digital technologies generate business synergies by merging data gathering, analysis, and communication through enterprise systems and applying the insights for business decision-making (Bharadwaj et al., 2013; Saxena, 2021). Hence, it calls for strategic interventions coupled with technological considerations. As the customers, suppliers and employees are becoming more demanding, organisations now target personalised engagements with each of their business partners through innovative communication channels such as social media platforms and personalised mobile apps. Irrespective of industry size or type, DT is disrupting business at all levels, resulting in traditional core competencies gradually becoming less effective. The inflexible and conventional management methods, organisational structures, and regulations may become barriers to organisational progress, demanding agility in modern times.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Digital Transformation: The novel use of digital technologies for fundamentally transforming the business model to the extent that digital technology forms the core of business.
Digital Transformation Leadership: Traits and activities require to initiate and sustain digital transformation of business.
Business model: A conceptual map of organisational offerings, supplies, customers, and revenue sources to facilitate the existence and survival of a business.
Co-Creation: Creation of business value by business organisation collaborating with customers or suppliers or both.
Business value: A basic idea of what contribution does the business make for its stakeholders, i.e., for suppliers, employees, customers, and wider society. The value is often in monetary terms but can also be non-monetary and intangible.
CIO Role: Diverse set of activities that the CIOs need to undertake in an organisation.