Business technology and change leaders need to know how to respond to today’s challenges, prepare for the future and communicate a compelling vision for business technology and information leadership.
Today’s IT directors, managers and CIOs find themselves in a critical and strategically important position. They are increasingly the lynchpin for successful strategy execution and often first to have the spotlight shone on them when business systems fail causing customer and operational service interruptions.
The traditional, cornerstone responsibilities for internally facing systems to support operational, transaction processing and infrastructure is expanding. Increasingly today’s IT leaders are being called upon to take responsibility for technologies that manage customer interactions, digital sales and marketing; technology embedded in products and services, as well as shop-floor systems, equipment and devices, traditionally the domain of Operations and Engineering. All of which are a rich source of information that businesses are looking to exploit to gain insight into customers and operational performance, to enable better decision making. Business technology leaders need to be providing the platforms for data management, business intelligence and analytics, as well as the applications, systems and infrastructure. And, it all needs to work seamlessly together, with data integration and process automation wherever possible.
The boundary between business change and technology change is practically non-existent; very little business change today is conceived or achieved without business technologies and information playing a key role. Emerging technologies, including robotic process automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), are driving the debate on how to deliver more efficient and effective business models and processes.
With all this change and the need to be closer to, if not embedded in and inseparable from, the heart of the business, how do business technology leaders need to respond? What strategies do they need to develop and execute, to enable and contribute to business objectives? How should they organise their function? What skills do they need to be effective leaders for today and tomorrow?
These are the challenges that Searchlight helps CIOs to address:
- Aligning business, digital and technology strategies
- Enabling execution of strategy through enterprise business architecture leadership
- Selecting and engaging the right technology and implementation partners, leading informed negotiations and commercial engagement
- Delivering platforms for better data management and process/technology integration
- Leading the introduction, exploitation and scaling of automation and advanced technologies (IoT, AI/ML)
- Designing and implementing new, business technology management organisations and cloud operating models
Business technology and change leaders need to know how to respond to today’s challenges, prepare for the future and communicate a compelling vision for business technology and information leadership. They need to engage with their organisations, communicating with impact, influence and demonstrating the value that information and technology brings to business today.
Above all, Searchlight partners with CIOs to lead internal and partner teams to deliver projects and services that will enable their organisations to be truly successful and compete in the modern “digital” age.