CIO & CISO France Virtual Round Table

Customer Centricity

Customer-centric organizations prioritize their customers above all else and place them at the core of their business. IT organizations can learn from this model by shifting away from a role of simply support toward being a strategic partner to other departments within the organization. In this way, IT can become a value-adding asset as opposed to a cost driver within the organization.

Learning Outcomes

• How to understand the major challenges facing IT organizations today and how customer-centricity can help address them
• How to reorganize roles and responsibilities within your department and organize specialized teams to be more customer-centric
• How to evaluate external service providers and cloud services to keep costs and complexity to a minimum

Value Optimization

To stay competitive in the digital age, today’s IT leaders must guide their organizations through innovative and strategic changes that are often focused on value rather than costs. Identifying and focusing on the critical 20% of efforts that produce 80% of business value can help the organization dramatically reduce its costs while reducing effort spent on work that only produces marginal value.

Learning Outcomes

• How to anticipate and overcome the challenges associated with value optimization
• How to create a team of relevant stakeholders to help guide the organization through the value optimization process
• How to identify new business capabilities and processes the organization will need as it becomes increasingly digital

Panel Discussion: Collaboration is a Key Part of Digital Strategy

The workplace is rapidly evolving, and today’s leading CIOs recognize the need to enable business transformation for a digital-first world. But without a holistic view of the organization, simply adding new technologies can do more harm than good. For true digital transformation success, organizations must understand the critical nature of cross-departmental collaboration and alignment.

In the past, it may have been acceptable to plan for new technology implementations in a silo, but this is no longer the case. Without a thorough understanding of end user needs and workflows, it can be all too easy to increase complexity with the addition of new digital tools, which can quickly undermine employee productivity and customer experience.

Leaders must therefore establish open communication throughout the organization in order to have the information necessary to make improvements. If teams are not empowered to voice their needs and concerns, then the entire organization will eventually be negatively affected. In contrast, when leaders across departments are aligned and can seamlessly collaborate on strategies that take into account how the business operates as a whole, then successful transformation is much more likely.

Strategic alignment throughout an organization removes barriers to transformation. This alignment begins at the top with leaders who foster a culture of collaboration, partnership, growing skills, and teamwork. Organizations that are unable to adopt such a framework may soon be left behind.

Panel Questions

1. How can CIOs identify whether the structure of their organization is supportive of collaborative work?
2. What steps can CIOs take to foster a culture of improved collaboration within their organizations?
3. How can CIOs measure improvements in collaboration?