Insights from the C-Suite
Published on : Sunday 03-07-2022
By making consistent, incremental changes, the C-suite can successfully lay the foundation for digital transformation.
As the pandemic continues to accelerate organisation-wide transformation, businesses are focusing on investing in digital-first technology to improve their response to changing consumer preferences and demands.
However, adopting new technologies is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a holistic digital transformation. It’s more about how leaders use that technology to drive business growth. Not to mention the external forces those are redefining competition across every industry: Artificial Intelligence, cyberattacks, climate change, and the demands for more diversity and inclusion.
It is evident that CEOs and their C-suite counterparts who focus on reinvention develop the ability to invest in adequate strategies, people, and culture, and facilitate their collaboration for a rapid transformation.
Here are some insights from the C-suite that can help businesses better navigate through their journey towards a much-needed digital transformation.
The top challenges
What, according to the C-suite, are the top challenges faced by businesses in the post-pandemic period?
The continuous need to innovate and deliver excellence has led to an inevitable shift in perspective of the C-suite. A robust digital transformation strategy can help them automate processes, fuel creativity, and lessen the time spent on administrative tasks. However, going the digital transformation route can be a daunting task.
Here are the top obstacles that businesses face and aim to overcome to successfully bring about rapid digital transformation.
1. Technology adoption to facilitate strategic problem solving – Deploying strategic and up-to-date technology investments can be challenging for businesses owing to the speed at which old technologies become obsolete and get replaced by new ones.
2. Decentralised management of workflows – Typically, business processes are conducted in siloes which may leave scope for errors as well as cause undue delays. Inadequate business process management fuelled by a lack of collaboration can drastically hinder organisational growth.
3. Recruitment, training, and retention of employees – The ever-increasing competition coupled with volatile markets has raised the attrition rates drastically. The C-suite often struggles with hiring skilled talent, training them in core competencies, and then retaining them for a positive ROI.
4. Shifting consumer demands – Consumers today are hyper aware of the technologies available in the market and demand that their products be incorporated with these modern technologies to meet the needs. This constant shift in demands makes it challenging for businesses to deploy resources and remain current.
5. Tightly stretched IT budget – Modernisation can become a pricey affair if not dealt with strategically. Additionally, new, elusive technologies that promise a stellar RoI can be heavy on investments in the initial stages. Adequate resource allocation can be taxing for businesses, especially with thinly stretched IT budgets.
How is the C-suite planning to address these challenges?
1. Redeploying IT efforts and investments to accelerate modernisation – Maintaining a competitive edge is only possible when businesses equip themselves with modern technologies like data analytics, AI/ML, and IoT. The C-suite’s effort to channelise investments towards adopting modern technologies can be a game-changer for businesses aiming to achieve digital transformation.
2. Enlisting citizen developers and enterprise apps to facilitate centralised governance – Hiring skilled developers deft in niche technologies tends to be expensive and limiting. Leveraging the power of cutting-edge technologies like low code development allows the C-suite to entrust citizen developers to contribute to organisational growth. Additionally, streamlining workflows via enterprise apps makes governance a piece of cake.
3. Recruiting talent with computational, leadership, and problem-solving skills – The advent of smart devices and their ability to make data-driven decisions has offloaded a lot of work from people. With the tech part of business mostly taken care of, the C-suite is looking for people with unique, intangible skills in the realm of leadership, communication, and strategic decision-making.
4. Embracing digital customer experience at every stage of the business strategy – Digital customer experience, put simply, is a sum of all the interactions between a business and a consumer on numerous online platforms.
5. Decentralising IT funds for mission-critical work – By eliminating intermediaries, businesses can equip stakeholders to conduct financial transactions through emerging technology without compromising on responsiveness to local needs and flexibility.
What are the top priorities for the C-suite in the future?
While it is crucial for the C-suite to address current needs of the business, it is even more important for them to think ahead on ways to not only survive but thrive in the future. By deploying strategic investments in the areas mentioned below, businesses can successfully mitigate the number of challenges as well as their impact to effectively future proof themselves.
i. Driving business innovation
ii. Developing and refining business strategy
iii. Identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation
iv. Executing and leading change efforts, and
v. Implementing new technologies.
At this juncture, I would like to emphasise that the changes that drive digital transformation are not measured by scope or size, but instead, impact. By making consistent, incremental changes, the C-suite can successfully lay the foundation for digital transformation. The shared vision between the C-Suite and other stakeholders can essentially provide the cornerstone for long-term success.
Also do read this interesting blog focusing on delivery excellence through our company’s lens, written by our CEO Sanjeev Fadnavis:
https://www.nitorinfotech.com/blog/delivery-excellence-through-nitors-lens
Article Courtesy: NASSCOM Community – an open knowledge sharing platform for the Indian technology industry: https://community.nasscom.in/communities/digital-transformation/insights-c-suite
(This article is attributed to Nitor Infotech)
