Insights and Help for IT Leaders
Most companies want to improve customer experience, lower costs and increase revenues. But only a few are actually successful at achieving these goals. It is not that they are not forward-looking. They have many improvements initiatives in different areas of the business. But the cumulative effect of these initiatives is still not sufficient to move the dial on overall performance.
Continue reading “Reimagine customer experience to unlock value”
The volume of digital payments worldwide is soaring and will reach $5 trillion by 2020. This growth is fuelled by new payment systems that are designed to work seamlessly with mobiles, in-app methods or via browsers. There has been huge innovation in this area by the banks, software giants like Apple, and fintechs. This growth creates new opportunities and risks for the retail banks. Continue reading “Digital Payments – Opportunity or Threat”
There are leaders who believe they are the smartest and most capable in the organisation. They don’t need any input from others. They know it all. As a result, they often find faults in good suggestions from others and stifle the flow of ideas. We know these people because often we have worked for or around such people. Continue reading “How leaders bring out the best in their teams”
In the digital age, technology role in business transformation is becoming more and more significant. Many transformation initiatives are heavily dependent on technology enablement. In order to support the business transformation agenda, IT leaders have two challenges; readying the operations and developing the needed IT capability. Continue reading “Is Your IT Ready to Support Transformation?”
Most of the IT projects impact the way work is being done in the organisation. In order to get value or benefits from these changes, it is necessary that these system or process improvements are actually utilised and become part of the new way of doing work. This requires change management.
Transformation projects such as core systems replacement or even major outsourcing have a significant impact on the way business operates in an organisation. Here, change management becomes integral to the project success. While most IT and other senior executives understand the need for effective change management, in reality many projects fail to deliver the full potential due to the mistakes in change management. Continue reading “Why Change Programs fail?”
Many CIOs are scared of organisational politics and think it is a dirty business. Often CIOs come from a technology background and technical expertise is their forte. Politics, and wheeling and dealing are not their comfort zone. They focus their energy on finding the best technology solutions for the business’s problems. The CIO’s daily battles are about up-time service delivery, and project delivery. 
They shy away from business level politics wherever they can. Many CIOs see politics as a ‘necessary evil’ or some sort of ‘game’ to play. Those who tend to look at politics in this way tend not to be very good at dealing with company politics. Continue reading “Can CIOs avoid politics?”
There is a myth that if an organisation begins takes steps to use digital technologies, the problem of IT complexity will resolve itself. In the digital age, organisations expect to connect with customers and partners in new ways; give greater access to information and services via new channels; and quickly launch new products and services.
Most reports to board about the performance of Information Technology group’s performance relate to costs related metrics such as headcounts and expenses. But as the world is changing, topics such as digital business models, process automation and changing skill mix needed to support organisation’s aspirations are becoming more relevant to organisations success. How IT manages the integration of new technologies can help determine the success of the digital strategy. Hence, just relying on the cost related metrics does not provide a reliable indicator of IT performance. Continue reading “What Questions the Board Should Ask Of IT”
(This article was kindly contributed by my friend Peter Hind who runs Hindsight Forum in Sydney and Melbourne. It is a vendor free forum where technology managers come together and share their experiences. )
Increasingly the task for many information and technology departments is to evolve their activities from being the doers to becoming the managers of the doers. This evolution has been driven by both the steady use of outsourcing and the burgeoning popularity of Cloud computing. With many organisations now in their third iteration of outsourcing and with the service delivery model for applications and infrastructure gaining traction the challenge is to ensure that the agreements that govern these relationships are effective. Continue reading “Establishing a productive partnership”