CIO
opinion
CIO
OPINION
business, including HR and Marketing. Today,
the employee mix is changing rapidly.
Organisations are attracting more Gen Y –
and soon Gen Z – into the business; they’re
naturally digitally-savvy. They expect their
entire employee lifecycle to be represented
in a more digital way and have different
expectations on how they’re engaged
and communicated with and how they
do their jobs. They want to be able to use
their personal devices in the workplace and
there’s also greater hunger for learning
and development. It’s a ‘force that can’t
be stopped’.
At Dimension Data, in order to deliver the
digital experience that our employees expect,
we’re digitising our HR function. For example,
we’re using a cloud-based HR system,
Workday, to make admin easier for our people
and provide us with better insights to manage
talent. We’re helping our people develop their
skills with an online academy and a ‘learn
to code’ project. And of course, we use tools
like Microsoft Yammer and Cisco WebEx to
collaborate and share ideas with colleagues
around the world.
Marketing is another functional area that
we’re digitising. For example, we’re re-
building our website on a new architecture
www.intelligentcio.com
“
TO SUCCESSFULLY
DRIVE
TRANSFORMATION,
CIOS NEED
CLOUT AND ONE
OF THE FIRST
CRITICAL STEPS
IS TO SECURE
EXECUTIVE
OWNERSHIP
AND SUPPORT
FOR YOUR
TRANSFORMATION
INITIATIVE.
to make it easier for clients to find the right
information they’re looking for. We’re
automating our marketing operations to
make them more relevant and personalised
to individual client relationships. And
we’re integrating marketing operations
with sales, creating a joined-up journey for
clients across any channel that they choose
to use.
Make your transformation your own
My final piece of advice to CIOs is to avoid
falling into the trap of panicking in the
face of all the media hype around digital.
You have to strike a balance between
streamlining existing processes, versus
finding radically different ways of doing
business. The transformation you need to
implement also depends entirely on your
particular competitive situation. Look at your
competitors, where they are, where they’re
going; then look at yourself, where you are,
where you’re going.
You don’t have to become the next Airbnb
or Uber and you don’t necessarily need to
adopt a totally new business model. Your
digital transformation may only need to be
an extension of what you’ve been doing in
the past. n
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