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.
Are you on your “A” game? Keeping yourself up to date has never been more vital…
FACT: The CIO/CTO position is the only Board position where the necessary knowledge and skills need constant updating. Just like Moore’s Law has seen the exponential increase in computing power, so has the IT expert’s need to stay abreast of technology. It can be a nightmare. CEOs want their teams to be on their ‘A’ Game, and for us that means constantly updating our knowledge and our ability to handle new tech.
And the stakes are high. IT increasingly underpins all strategic business objectives—no department can deliver them without IT. It’s our team that increasingly underwrites the strategic objectives and enables the CEO to deliver them and to provide shareholder value. So we absolutely must understand the latest technology and being able to discuss options, ideas, and principles with department heads.
We don’t have to know everything. I’m not talking about in-depth ‘build-a-layered-network’ type of knowledge. I mean having enough technical knowledge to be able to innovate, to make informed strategic decisions, to keep the business ahead of the competition, and to know what the technicians are talking about.
This means that a fundamental part of knowledge acquisition is deciding what to learn, how to learn and when to learn. So, how do you choose?
We use a simple diagram:
The idea then is to figure out where each bit of technology falls on the continuum. Here is what I suggest:
1. Think about your current situation and the needs. You might even make a list:
· What do you need?
· What does the company need?
· What does your team need?
2. Once you have the needs in front of you, prioritise:
Where is the most urgent need for knowledge? Concentrate on that area, but don’t ignore the others—make sure they have an appropriate place in the order.
3. Work out how best to gain this knowledge. There are a number of ways to learn:
· The traditional route. Websites, books, magazine articles, etc. Many CIOs we know set up Google Alerts on topics they want to stay on top of. This method is useful for finding new knowledge or innovative ideas.
· The on-the-go route. Podcasts, TED sessions, audiobooks and the like—sources that you can learn from when you’re driving or exercising. This method works well for topic assessment or getting under the skin of a specific technology.
· The planned attendance route. These are occasions when you’ve signed up to a training session, a conference, or a webinar, because the topic is interesting and useful, but it’s not an immediate priority. It’s also useful for ‘large topic’ learning.
· Just-in-time. This is when you’re just a few pages ahead of those you’re working with. This sort of knowledge can be gained from peers, colleagues, or even the technical teams. You just need to know how to ask the right questions. This is not a substitute for the other routes; it has to be ‘as-well-as,’ not ‘instead-of.’
· ‘Find an expert who knows.’ Look within your network for someone with an in-depth knowledge of the subject. Buy them a coffee or lunch and find out the salient points. Also: ask the expert how he or she acquires their knowledge; they may know a website or seminar you haven’t heard of.
Remember that for the most part this is not about monolithic knowledge. It’s about distinguishing which pieces of knowledge will be useful to you and the business. Prince2, for example, is all very well. But if you try and implement the whole thing you lose credibility. Instead, implement a few useful parts as the basis of sensible project management. The key to knowledge acquisition is knowing which bits to leave on the cutting room floor.
CIOs and CTOs have a complex job, and their knowledge base reflects that. It’s not just the functional IT knowledge they need to keep improving, there’s all the IT leadership knowledge as well. Not to mention the business and commercial skills, like forecasting and budgets. Whilst these other areas of knowledge don’t change at half the speed functional IT does, they do move on. So you need to constantly review the diagram above, adjusting your learning objectives accordingly.
A successful CIO or CTO will be the one who invests time and energy in judiciously updating their knowledge and skills. If it’s not yet a priority for you, it damn well should be! The fundamental point is don’t let it become something that you look back on and realise you should have done more of. Regret can be a painful thing to have in a career.
CEO’s Briefing: Technology Roadmap for Growth
If you’re planning for significant growth — or better yet, your business is already seeing it — you need IT to match.
Freeman Clarke Principals provide clear leadership with a business-focused roadmap for IT and technology. We’ve found it’s the best way for our clients to drive and support growth, without getting way ahead, or falling behind.
CEO's Briefing: IT Roadmap for Growth
Companies planning growth need to have a plan for how their IT can support and drive it. This CEOs briefing provides clear steps to create that plan.
The right IT and technology roadmap allows a business to scale up confidently, while maintaining or improving their margins and customer service. It ensures that the C-suite has up-to-date information regardless of the increasing size of the operation. It allows the leadership team to delegate authority to managers, who can make judgements based on accurate data. And it allows leadership to move fast and to take opportunities for partnerships or acquisitions. Furthermore, an IT roadmap optimizes the value of the business in the event of an exit.
What will the roadmap fix?
Admittedly, it’s not easy to create an IT roadmap. But without one, we typically see businesses impacted in the following ways:
Inefficient processes eroding margins and making good service difficult or expensive. Errors and issues increase as the business grows, which damages profitability and cash flow. Short-term problems dominate management and there is little time or money to plan for expansion.
Poor reporting tools means that analyzing costs, revenues, efficiency and profitability is difficult — but which products and customers are profitable shouldn’t be a matter of opinion, and comparing trends and plans versus actuals should be easy.
Lack of standardization means the business is reliant on individuals. People keep their own vital lists and system workarounds, which limits growth and expansion. When these key people are on vacation or sick then the whole business is affected. If they leave it’s a major problem!
What does the CEO’s briefing explain?
How the absence of an IT roadmap affects businesses and their ability to prosper
How to turn business objectives into IT objectives
The best way to make a flexible and practical IT roadmap
How to ensure the roadmap remains relevant and up to date
Where can you learn more?
Watch this video where Graeme Freeman (Co-founder and Director) explains what a technology Roadmap looks like, the benefits and how to start planning yours.
Using IT to Succeed in Third Party Logistics (3PL)
In an increasingly competitive market, the best 3rd party logistics (3PL) firms capture the lion’s share of the opportunities. IT is often a key aspect of their competitiveness and profitability.
How to ensure your business systems are well designed, properly configured, smoothly integrated and effectively used.
The Five Key Ways IT Is Integral to 3PL Success
Keep costs down by assigning responsibility. Both in IT and across the business, every investment must have a director scrutinizing the costs and accountable for delivery. Similarly, because IT costs and process are directly linked, someone needs to have ownership of process efficiency.
Automate tracking. Ensure accurate, effective, up-to-the-minute visibility and tracking of consignments — both internally and externally to customers. This may be complex and involve third parties, but ultimately it means meeting and exceeding customer expectations.
Streamline processes. Strive for integration and standardization of processes and IT within the company and with external customers and partners. This is critical for cost reduction, minimizing errors, and maximizing efficiency.
Aim for flexibility. Work towards being able to rapidly and efficiently take on new business and then deliver on your promises. At the same time, remember that contraction is an inevitable part of business logistics — plan for expansion and contraction to maintain profitability and stability.
Strategize for points of difference. Ensure that your business strategy and your IT strategy are complementary. Streamlined and low-cost operations, automated tracking and flexibility are the pillars for finding points of difference which allow you to avoid competing purely on cost.
As well as the summary above, we have created a more detailed CEO’s briefing on using IT to succeed in 3PL. Click on the link to download the full CEO’s briefing.
CEO’s Briefing on Using IT to Succeed in Third Party Logistics (3PL)
How to ensure your business systems are well designed, properly configured, smoothly integrated and effectively used.
We meet some companies who are constantly banging their heads against a brick wall when it comes to their IT budgets. For them, IT spending feels unplanned, unwelcome and unproductive. The Board are frustrated and (guess what!) the IT team is frustrated as well! It feels like money is spent on the wrong things and IT rarely seems to deliver.
Here are 5 steps to get this situation under control.
1. Who’s on the Hook? Serious businesses spend serious amounts of money on IT. A competent member of the senior team needs to understand the IT budget in detail, needs to take accountability for it and own its successful delivery. Too often, no-one around the Board table is really able to say for sure you’re not wasting money; not being ripped off by suppliers; but not under-investing either.
2. What’s the Strategy and ROI? IT expenditure needs to be justified in terms of alignment with strategy and return on investment. In order to do this there needs to be a strategy and there needs to be a plan! All IT projects need to be mapped to business objectives; they need to be fully costed and efficiency savings or sales uplifts identified to allow sensible commercial decision-making.
3. What’s Normal? Getting budgets under control is much easier when there is a consensus about what’s normal. Average spending on IT varies between sectors, company size, and other factors and benchmarking yourself against these averages can help create a consensus around what is normal and what your level of IT spend could and should be.
4. What’s Your Insource/outsource Strategy? Outsourcing can be a good way to rationalise IT and save money but too often companies outsource the wrong things. Which aspects of IT are just commodities and which are core aspects of your business value? If you are making serious outsourcing decisions then go through a proper tendering process. And when you are keeping IT functions in house make sure the senior team are able and committed to managing them well.
5. Refresh & replace Old kit needs replacing. It becomes unreliable, expensive to maintain and incompatible. You can pretend that’s not true, but then you will suffer these problems and have unbudgeted and unwelcome shock spends. Or you can agree a replacement policy and budget and plan on that basis. Setting and agreeing refresh and replace policies allows these decisions to become routine and budgeted well in advance. So these conversations no longer need to take up much time, and this creates time and energy to have proper discussions about how IT can really make a difference to the business.
Freeman Clarke is the UK’s largest and most experienced team of part-time (we call it “fractional”) IT directors, CIOs and CTOs. We work exclusively with SME and mid-market organisations and we frequently help them bring their budgets under control. Click Contact Us for an informal conversation.
7 Key Points When Hiring a CIO, CTO or IT Director
The IT leader is a critical role. But what is this role and how do you hire the best at an affordable salary?
There is no generally accepted definition of the differences between the roles of the IT Director, CIO (Chief Information Officer) and CTO (Chief Technology Officer). So for simplicity we use the term IT Director to encompass all 3 roles. In all cases the role covers information systems and the underlying technology. It may encompass strategy, business process and management information, digital and online, and office and facilities management as well.
The term CIO might be more appropriate for a role emphasising business process alignment, management information and business strategy rather than detailed technical leadership. In addition, they are going to be more focused on the operations and delivery of technology including infrastructure and management of third party service providers.
A CTO is generally someone focussed on software development, perhaps for digital projects. Ecommerce and customer interactive systems from social media through to customer portals are going to be where a CTO will be at home. They may be more aligned with marketing and revenue generation, and able to represent the company in relationships with funders and external parties.
An IT Director is perhaps the broadest term. It generally means an individual able to strategically lead all aspects of IT and its usage in business. They should have experience of business systems, software development, projects of all kinds, and IT infrastructure and facilities.
7 Key questions to consider when defining the role for your organisation:
1. Who will the individual report to? To work across the whole company, to change processes and how people work, the person needs to be part of the senior team and may need to report to the CEO.
2. Will the individual be responsible for your company’s Digital Vision? If you have plans for ecommerce or social media marketing then will the person be responsible for this?
3. Do you need a supplier manager or team builder? If your IT is largely or wholly outsourced then this requires a leader with strong contract management skills who is very used to commercial negotiation and procurement. If your IT is largely insourced then your IT leader needs the personal style and leadership qualities to inspire and build a team.
4. Is the plan for major projects? The mindset and attitude of a leader who drives change is typically quite different to the person who oversees a steady-state.
5. Is there is already strong technical management in place, or IT infrastructure provision is outsourced to suppliers who have proven themselves technically capable. Or do you need a technical leader to provide technical vision and oversight.
6. Does your business include complicated processes and no existing senior leaders with time to address issues?
7. Is there a clear need for good data management or good management information, or are these issues already covered off by existing roles?
We only hire the best in the business – fewer than 1% of the people who apply to join us are able to successfully complete every stage of our recruitment process. We are completely independent and able to provide IT Directors, CTOs and CIOs on a part-time and flexible basis (we call it “fractional”). If you want to talk to us about what one of our team could do for your business then you can get in touch my emailing contact@freemanclarke.com
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Graeme Freeman Co-Founder and Director
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