We value your privacy

We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience, serve personalized ads or content, and analyze our traffic. By clicking "Accept All", you consent to our use of cookies.

Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Skip to content

TECHSABADO

A weekly technology talk show

Primary Menu

TECHSABADO

  • TECH NEWS
  • BUSINESS
  • TELECOM
  • GADGETS
  • MOBILITY
  • EMPLOYMENT
  • About
  • Home
  • 2021
  • July
  • 14
  • BYLINER | How CIOs can have their cake and eat it too
  • BYLINER
  • SPECIAL FEATURE

BYLINER | How CIOs can have their cake and eat it too

Contribution to Tech Sabado July 14, 2021 0

How can CIOs effectively take back control of their organization’s IT roadmap?

pexels-photo-3183150

Share this…


  • Facebook



  • Twitter


  • Linkedin

By Jennifer Perry

The global pandemic created a wide variety of challenges across industries, and in IT, it caused bouts of “have your cake and eat it too” syndrome. On one hand, business leaders understandably became conservative with budgets, taking a cautious approach to spending during a period of economic uncertainty. On the other hand, these same leaders still wanted to see innovation continue to move forward, aspiring to obtain the ever-elusive yet much-coveted “digital transformation.”

To illustrate, a recent survey from IDG found that 80% of respondents say the pandemic accelerated demand for innovation. Yet at the same time, many faced this increased demand with shrinking budgets – more than half (52%) said the pandemic had resulted in reduced IT budgets to at least some extent.

This situation could have CIOs rolling their eyes. You can’t have it both ways — or can you?

It’s the big challenge facing CIOs right now. How do you continue to innovate in the face of the constraints presented by the pandemic? I have worked with many organizations, big and small, that had excellent IT roadmaps set up only for them to be smashed back to earth by the wrecking ball known as COVID-19. The current situation has caused CIOs to evaluate and prioritize EVERYTHING. For example, big bang ERP refresh or replacement projects are either put on hold or scrapped altogether as other initiatives with greater organizational impact are competing for the same resources (labor, time, budget). CIOs are asking which initiatives are most important at this crisis phase. If there is no clear and compelling ROI, the initiatives are either being deferred or canceled.

Part of the CIO’s job is to manage expectations from the business side of the house. I recently talked to a retailer that had ambitions to move to the cloud version of a major ERP software provider, but they had no real business case to make the move. The CIO needs to help their organization understand that this is not like restarting your phone to get the latest OS update — these types of migrations can take anywhere from two to five years and millions of dollars to complete. In other words, it better be worth it.

With all of these seemingly conflicting circumstances in play, how can CIOs effectively take back control of their organization’s IT roadmap? Here are three things I advise IT leaders to start with:

1. Work closely with the business side of operations. In the past, CIOs and their IT teams would traditionally be in charge of technology decisions and make them in isolation, but that has shifted. Today, if you have a need to solve within the business, you can’t simply throw an app at it. So, it’s imperative for CIOs to communicate in lockstep with business decision-makers to understand these needs and desired outcomes.

In my many years of working on technology projects, the most successful have been where the business and IT teams worked collaboratively to deliver the business outcomes. While working for a telecom company in Canada, the organization demonstrated that the recipe for success was to optimize their supply chain and ensure product availability in their retail stores. The business and IT teams worked closely to design the processes and underlying technology to successfully deliver on this outcome.

Fortunately, it appears many organizations understand this and are developing stronger relationships between business leaders, CFOs and CIOs. In fact, a recent Rimini Street survey found that a full 77% of CFO respondents said last year’s challenging business landscape created a stronger relationship with their CIO.

2. Focus first on quick (but high impact) wins that drive innovation forward. An all-too-common reaction when the business side of an organization doesn’t like a system or process is to simply get rid of it. “This isn’t working for me” is a refrain that many CIOs have heard too many times. Making it worse, software vendors can be good at getting to business executives and making them believe they always need the latest and greatest tech. If this happens, the CIO becomes the victim of whatever the decision-makers purchased. The business side always wants the fancy red velvet cake with a cherry on top, but in times like these, they may only need a cupcake.

What CIOs need to concentrate on, then, is high-impact projects that help move the business forward. I’m not currently seeing a lot of major ERP overhauls, it’s more about quick wins. One organization I work with is a major telecommunications provider, and they’ve always been ahead of the game from a digital transformation standpoint. A recent quick win for them was addressing a specific process that helped them remain nimble and increase their subscriber base in the face of changing market conditions. Keep in mind that what a quick win looks like can depend on the industry. In retail, for example, it might mean improving the online shopping experience during a time when the bulk of physical locations were closed.

3. Always remember the real revenue drivers: your end users and customers. One area I often advise organizations to focus on when looking for these quick wins is the customer experience. If you allocate some of your IT budget toward making things easier for users and customers, it tends to boost satisfaction, not to mention the bottom line.

I once worked with a chemical distribution business that wanted to make it easier for people to buy their products. Everyone thinks about Amazon as the industry gold standard, so they invested in their sales platform to create an improved purchasing experience. Among the many customers were farmers and pest control companies, so this company set up a system where they could browse the website for specific types of insects, click on it, and then view the combination of chemicals they needed to get rid of that insect. It turned out to be an innovative way to help their consumers and keep them coming back; farmers would buy product for what they needed for the growing season, and later they would come back for chemicals to protect their produce.

In the end, there are two things we know for sure: fallout from the pandemic won’t end anytime soon, and neither will the desire to keep driving innovation forward. In this environment, it is as imperative as ever for CIOs to act shrewdly. And in most cases, developing strong relationships with business decision-makers and focusing on quick but impactful wins, all while keeping customers in mind, is a winning combination that will help get you there.

Jennifer Perry is the global vice president and general manager, SAP Services, Rimini Street. Perry’s career spans more than 24 years of IT experience with Fortune 100 and 500 companies in various industries including many years of hands on experience as a certified SAP implementation consultant. At Rimini Street, she is responsible for the expansion of the Company’s SAP services and products worldwide, including product strategy, management, messaging, delivery and sales. Prior to that, Perry was responsible for the delivery and management of all SAP support services for Rimini Street clients.

Contribution to Tech Sabado

Post Navigation

Previous TELECOM | PLDT, Smart push for rationalized fees to improve Internet access
Next PC HARDWARE | MSI motherboard is ready for Windows 11

More Stories

e-cig
  • LIFESTYLE
  • SPECIAL FEATURE

LIFESTYLE | Smoke-free alternatives may help smokers quit, report says

by TechSabado.com editors May 20, 2025 0
makati-biz-district
  • BUSINESS
  • SPECIAL FEATURE

BUSINESS | Asia-Pacific outlook: Election spending, trade tensions shape regional growth

Jing Garcia and 1 more May 13, 2025 0
e-cig
  • LIFESTYLE
  • SPECIAL FEATURE

LIFESTYLE | E-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco offer path to quitting smoking

by TechSabado.com editors May 6, 2025 0

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Tech Sabado

TechSabado.com is the official website of Tech Sabado: A weekly technology talk radio show live streaming every Saturday on Facebook Live! and on the TechSabado YouTube channel from 8:00 P.M. to 9:30 P.M.

Hosted by tech journalists Jing Garcia, busines tech editor of The Manila Times & managing editor TechSabado.com and Atty. Melvin Calimag, executive managing editor of Newsbytes.ph

 

Produced by Newsbytes.ph and TechSabado.com.

 

For inquiries send an email to:  editor@techsabado.com]

 

Support our independent tech news reporting by sending us tips:

https://streamelements.com/techsabado/tip

 

 

Copyright © All rights reserved. | CoverNews by AF themes.