Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 25 | Page 67

t cht lk TECH TALK /////////////////////////////////////////////////// GOING BEYOND THE BUZZ IN 2019 AND UNDERSTANDING ‘DIGITAL’ While Digital Transformation is all the rage these days, Chris Pope, VP of Innovation at ServiceNow, says that understanding the subject is a prerequisite if firms are going to fully appreciate where new and emerging technology will have an impact. T here are college degrees in computer science and software engineering that feature different programming languages and methodologies. Looking further, there are technical architecture courses and many extended forms of tuition designed to school us in every aspect of technology you can think of. Yet, despite all these channels of teaching and the many books that have been written to explore our world of technology, we appear to largely fail when it comes to formalising a wider approach to simply ‘teaching digital’. www.intelligentcio.com A responsibility to embrace digital The consequences of not embracing digital and the process of moving fundamental work operations to new cloud-based, services-driven platforms leads to something of a vicious circle. Firms start to haemorrhage employees who look to move into roles where they will be more productive. And as a result, the company is left with a digital skills shortage. Firms that do embrace digital platforms effectively will, in contrast, start to develop tighter integration and collaboration across initiatives that are being played out across “ THE HARDER PART OF LEARNING DIGITAL IS UNDERSTANDING HOW IT WILL CHANGE THE BUSINESS IN THE SHORT, MEDIUM AND LONG-TERM. INTELLIGENTCIO 67