Technology evolves rapidly and offers many benefits to businesses and organisations of any size. Without technology, many companies wouldn’t have emerged unscathed from the global COVID pandemic. However, as things have moved on, more and more organisations have seen the benefit of adopting digital technologies to transform the way they operate.
This is set to continue over the next 12 months.
The challenge for Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) – and, to a lesser extent, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) – is keeping pace with the rapidly changing tech landscape and anticipating what is lying ahead. Here, we take a closer look at some of the key things CTOs need to focus on as 2022 unfolds.
Evolve your technology strategy
Digital transformation remains a crucial issue for organisations of all sizes. Global spending on digitalisation is set to hit almost two trillion dollars in 2022, with the pandemic continuing to focus attention on the need to introduce more technology into the workplace.
So, regardless of how big or small your business or organisation is, you simply cannot afford to stand still when it comes to technology.
Innovations based on machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, along with evolving workflow streamlining tools and process automation, continue to come to the fore.
A vital part of the CTO’s role will be to recognise and embrace these advances and be the cheerleader for digital change.
It’s all about setting the strategic thinking of your business or organisation and working with each business function and your in-house ICT resource to create a digital roadmap to make the most of new ways of working and the enhanced capabilities that new technology brings.
I’s also about being able to help departments, team and business units understand how changes can create new opportunities, produce real cost savings and reduce manual processes, and use this information to help those departments build business cases for investment. Typically, spend on ICT and digital needs to demonstrate saving in the areas leveraging it, so your technology leaders must work with departments to achieve this. CTOs also need to understand the politics of an organisation, as there will be some areas more open to change than others. The key to unlocking the benefits in more areas lies in selecting the right business units, as pathfinders, to start with.
Effective adoption of technology
It’s one thing for an organisation to invest in new technology. But if the organisation doesn’t use that technology correctly, it won’t get the most out of it.
CTOs have a role to play here by acting as enablers to ensure that the technology is being used as
intended. While CTOs should be crucial to the decision-making process when it comes to technology investments, they should also work with the ICT team and systems engineers on the development and rollout of new solutions.
CTOs should act as a bridge between business leaders and ICT in order to ensure that what is delivered can and is adopted. They should support the building and piloting of digital business platforms to ensure they meet organisational needs most effectively and encourage adoption.
CTOs also have a role in assessing and mitigating risk when any new technology is introduced.
Provide innovation leadership
As we mentioned in the introduction to this blog, technology evolves at a frantic pace. A key challenge for CTOs is staying ahead of the curve.
One of the primary roles of a CTO is to provide vision and drive change when it comes to technology. They should be the focal point for an organisation’s technology.
That doesn’t necessarily mean getting involved in every aspect of digital transformation. It does, however, mean setting the direction and providing technical leadership to CIOs, enterprise architects, software engineers, developers, and other technology and innovation professionals.
Focus on agility
The agility of an organisation lies in its ability to respond to change. The global pandemic has brought about increased demand for work from home/remote working, which creates challenges around how businesses can keep their users connected and productive while remaining safe and secure.
CTOs usually have overall responsibility for managing an organisation’s technology infrastructure, including deployment, integration, systems management and technical operations.
While the shift to cloud-based solutions continues apace, many organisations still rely on physical assets, infrastructure and datacentres, which can be outdated and cause significant operational and security issues.
Getting a better understanding of an organisation’s tools and people and using that insight to manage infrastructure services more efficiently is key to enhancing agility and helping the organisation become more responsive to demands from staff, customers and service users.
CTOs should play a major role in designing, implementing, and maintaining IT infrastructure elements and work proactively to create more agile processes.
They will be judged on the ability of staff to access services from anywhere, the timeliness of new product launches, the swiftness of the introduction of new technology and their ability to respond to the unforeseen.
Enhance collaboration
One of the major benefits that digital transformation unlocks is collaboration.
In fact, with executive support and investment in the right technology, digital transformation can play a crucial role in enhancing cross-departmental collaboration.
The focus for CTOs here is facilitating highly collaborative relationships across their organisation that can deliver the most significant value. It’s all about helping teams and departments to align their own strategies with the organisation’s strategic vision and priorities, then ensuring they have the technology and skills and knowledge they need to make that vision a reality.
As we said earlier, huge advantages lie in choosing to start with sympathetic business units to demonstrate benefit, before moving onto the more difficult and less willing to change business units. Creating exemplars is an effective way of encouraging other business units to follow.
Maximising technology budgets
If the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that pressure on ICT spend is increasing, particularly in the public sector.
The days of ‘technology for technology’s sake’ are gone – there must be either a cost saving in comparison to the existing, or a business benefit that drives a cost saving or increase in revenue.
So, maximising return on investment in technology is vital.
The role for CTOs here is to ensure that their organisation is optimising the technology it has invested in to its full potential to get the most from it. It also means reducing wasteful spending on obsolete or under-utilised technology, especially where the savings could be put to better use if spent elsewhere.
AMDH can help your organisation reduce costs, improve service delivery, enhance collaboration, boost productivity, and provide better support to staff, stakeholders, and service users.
As your technology partner, we’ll work with you to understand your organisation, your current situation and your technology needs before creating the right solution for you. We do this by immersing ourselves in your business and collaborating with a trusted network of partners as required. If you’re a CTO, we can work alongside you to provide expert, objective advice and guidance to inform your technology strategy and help you make the right choices.
And if you’re a business or organisation with no in-house CTO, we can provide the technical leadership you need to make your next technology project a success.
To learn more about how we can help your organisation achieve improvement through technology, give us a call on 01332 322588.
