How do you get to the top spot in technology? And how do you stay there? Freeman Clarke’s ‘The Curious CIO’ brings you the stories of technology leaders, how they made it to the Boardroom, and what they learned along the way. Featuring CIO James Alcock and CEO (and former CIO) Steve Clarke, ‘The Curious CIO’ is a conversation about leadership, business, and technology.
For over 20 years, James Alcock has helped CEOs and business leaders ensure long-term success with sound technology strategies. He focuses on harnessing digital innovations to reduce risk, increase competitive advantage, and add value. Steve Clarke is an IT and technology expert with a deep interest in leadership and career development for CIOs. He is co-founder and director of Freeman Clarke, the UK’s largest and most experienced team of fractional CIOs, CTOs, and IT Directors.
Freeman Clarke provide fractional, Board-level IT leadership for mid-market businesses. Our technology leaders become part of the senior team to drive growth with technology—at a fraction of the cost.
E1: Sajjad Ahmed: From a Pakistani wheatfield to CIO (and back) The podcast kicks off with Sajjad Ahmed, CIO at International SOS, who started thinking about leadership as a 9-year-old in Pakistan. Ahmed explains his journey from Pakistan to a London boardroom, his motivations and leadership style, and how he keeps a CEO engaged in the technology function.
Top 8 challenges for IT leaders in 2021
At the beginning of 2021, CIO.co.uk outlined what they believed would be this year’s top eight challenges for IT leaders:
Facilitating the future of work
Securing the hybrid enterprise
Flipping the 80/20 IT landscape
Skilling up for accelerated digital roadmaps
Scrutinising IT budgets
Maintaining 24/7 uptime
Battling burnout
Blending safety and innovation
Well, okay, I get all these. But is this as good as it gets? Couldn’t we aim a bit higher?
For example, we shouldn’t be ‘facilitating the future of work,’ we should be driving it! As for 24/7 uptime, surely we’ve all got that in place already? Particularly now, when technology has enabled businesses to carry on despite the pandemic?
I think we can easily come up with a more inspirational and impactful list—especially when we’re looking for talking points to bring to the CEO.
In this accelerated moment, CEO attentions are more than usually divided. But part of your job as a CIO is to make a case to the CEO for how technology makes a difference to competitive advantage. Technology can and should be the key to more rapid growth, to outstripping the competition, and to becoming more profitable.
And yet the above list would have us focus on infrastructure. If we were in a car, it’s as if the next five sets of traffic lights have all turned green, and yet we’re driving along in second gear: admiring the scenery when we should be hitting the gas.
So, what do I think we should be doing now? We need to focus on getting the CEO excited about their IT. And we need to demonstrate, as CIOs, that we’re commercially astute businesspeople and not propeller heads. We need to show that we’re thinking about how to help the company grow faster and make more money.
So, what about this list instead:
1. Omnichannel everywhere. Everyone engages with the business however they wish, whether they’re suppliers, customers, or employees.
2. Bring the customers closer. Digitisation of everything—now!
3. Integrate and automate to speed up the business; RPA, APIs and Middleware to deliver a connected business.
4. Real BI/MI to make delivering data the lifeblood of the business and enable fantastic decision-making.
5. Give the business what it wants. Departments should want to come to you first.
6. Support innovation. Create sandboxes where employees can safely innovate.
7. Programmes and projects delivered on time, within budget, and to specification. Always.
8. Right person in the right seat on the right bus. Wrong people off the bus.
Consider this list less about challenges than priorities. After all, if there is anything that past eighteen months has taught us, it’s that challenges have a way of finding you whether you plan for them or not.
The power of technology: online service delivery
We’ve seen so many changes in online service delivery. What does it all mean to a mid-market business? Our IT and technology experts discuss the pressing topics in online service delivery, such as the big shift to ecommerce, adding value post-purchase, better integration with vendors to save time and money, and meeting the needs of demanding corporate clients.
Online Service Delivery: Don’t forget job satisfaction
Your systems strategy should focus on what the clients want. But staff must be a consideration as well. Our IT and technology experts discuss how systems strategy can be a crucial factory in the attraction and retention of staff.
New tools have made it much easier and cheaper to deliver information, offers, and new services to customers after they buy. Our IT and technology experts discuss new ways to add value after the purchase is done.
Online service delivery: E-commerce in the mid-market
We’ve seen a huge increase in Freeman Clarke B2B clients moving into the ecommerce space. Whilst many mid-market businesses have resisted the shift, it’s been a boon for our clients. Our IT and technology experts provide their thoughts on this ecommerce in the mid-market.
Technology can be a choke point for a mid-market business, or it can actually drive growth. Streamlining systems and processes, automation, investing in technology to move into new markets — there are so many ways to use technology to remove obstacles to business growth. Our experts discuss the power of technology in a mid-market company.
‘Between us all, we’ve been there, we’ve seen it, we’ve done it.’ Our IT leaders explain their extensive digital and commercial technology experience.
We’re a team of 100+ Board-level technology leaders (CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and IT Directors) who collaborate and knowledge share every day so that we can deliver the very best for our clients. We work across all industries including; retail, manufacturing, logistics, pharma, facilities management, professional services, construction, engineering, private equity to name a few. It’s safe to say we’ve got you covered!
Visit our Knowledge centres which include expert documents that will help your business improve and grow.
The 3 key ways to transform your business with technology
The lockdown created an urgent need for many businesses to switch to home offices. It wasn’t easy, but it was doable: getting people connected and working from home didn’t hurt so much.
But for many mid-market business leaders, the dash to homeworking exposed troubling strategicchallenges:
Broken processes, including unresolved issues about which teams and individuals have ownership of which responsibilities
Over-reliance on individual experts and paper-based ways of working that waste manpower and don’t scale up
System-wide bottlenecks, including wasted effort and delays in management reporting
For nearly every mid-market business, security issues became even more acute. The lockdown quite quickly exposed weak and out-dated security and authorisation processes. The result? Companies are falling prey to cyberattacks. Or when the next audit comes round, they will struggle to demonstrate regulatory compliance.
These issues call for transformational changes. And although they won’t be easy, they’re not as hard as you might think.
Transformation 1: Using IT infrastructure to add value
Companies need to ensure that their IT infrastructure matches their business strategy.
For example, we often recommend outsourcing basic IT support of cloud services. This frees up in-house people to focus on value-adding activities. Depending on your own company strategy, it may be better to in-source strategic software development, business process improvement, back-office systems configuration or data analysis.
Transformation 2: Integrated systems, processes and controls
It can feel daunting to move away from legacy ways of working. But simple, well-structured processes and systems cost less, improve customer service, and allow for compliance and business continuity planning.
If your systems and data are rationalised, you can integrate with external services, so as we mentioned above, outsourcing can become part of your strategy.
And, for many business service providers, your ability to integrate with your clients’ systems provides a point of difference and creates a barrier to exit.
Finally, this transformation creates a platform for adoption of AI/ML and for creating new online channels.
Transformation 3: Innovation and digital initiatives
Both consumers and business clients expect almost all products and services to be online. Most innovations now have digital at their heart, and digital experiences are now practically inseparable from your customers’ experience of your brand.
This technology is much more than a necessary evil. To create a high-value and agile business, CEOs must embrace technology as part of their strategy.
These are uncertain times. But many CEOs see opportunities to restructure their business, to enter new markets, and to scale up. The above three transformations offer an approach to plan for your own breakthrough.
Need help? Many CEOs engage Freeman Clarke because we take on uncomfortable changes and challenges with reassurance and guidance. Transformational change requires experienced and expert IT leadership.
We are the largest and most experienced team of IT leaders. If you want to know more about how we can help, then get in touch.
Freeman Clarke is the UK’s largest and most experienced team of fractional IT leaders. We work exclusively with ambitious organisations, helping our clients use IT to beat the competition. Contact us and we’ll be in touch for an informal conversation.
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Graeme Freeman Co-Founder and Director
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Thank you.
You’ll now receive regular expert business insights.
