CDO - The Chief Digital Officer
Digital transformation is a work in progress. As we have seen thus far, digital transformation is one of the key ways of empowering companies and their way of doing business using new information communication technologies and their application in business models. In the previous blog, we looked at the learnings that the process of digital transformation itself teaches us. In this blog, we are going to look at understanding the stakes and impacts of these learning curves on the business. We will also see how digitalization represents strategic, organizational, and cultural stakes for the company and requires the commitment and involvement of the top management. This blog infers that there is a new chair at the table - that of a Chief Digital Officer. Since a successful transformation requires the engagement of all organizational resources, a special emphasis is placed on human resources, where the new role of Chief Digital Officer, the CDO becomes important.
The Chief Digital Officer should be advocating a systematic approach, focusing on the transformation of the whole organization and mobilization of their resources through the entire organizational structure with the aim of business transformation with the application of the corresponding technologies. As such, a Chief Digital Officer is considered to be a digital transformation specialist, responsible for digital initiatives, and cooperation with key business and technology domain experts, both within and outside the organization. Also, digital transformation is a complex process in which whose performance of all available enterprise resources must be included - technological, physical, financial, and most important - human resources. For this reason, in response to the current trend of digital transformation, organizations represent a new leadership role - the CDO.
The CDO needs to possess new knowledge and skills and be capable of implementing different modes of operation. The core responsibility is the transformation of traditional organizations into digital with the help of digital technologies and processes. Consequently, the CDO must have a wide range of knowledge, skills, and experience to be able to create new business opportunities for organizations and provide users with new values. And the CDO must direct his action to the development of a digital strategy that will enable the strategic growth of the organization with the promotion of digital culture and create a closer relationship with the users. In generating value, a successful CDO uses and experiments with digital technologies to find new business opportunities and develops communication and management strategies for all changes in the organization. At the same time, inspirational, innovative, business, and team experience and understanding of social technologies are considered critical competencies of successful CDOs.
Three types of CDOs
Digital Accelerator — The CDO who initiates digital innovation in the organization, complementing existing IT managers. As such, they are free to experiment with different digital technologies and are prone to achieve quick results.
Digital Marketer — As the name suggests, it is a person that implements digital marketing in the organization by emphasizing a personalized relationship with clients and processing relevant user data. S/he is responsible for the direct connection of the organization with the client and establishes digital communication channels.
Digital Harmonizer - The CDO connects all of the digital initiatives initiated by the organization. S/he is responsible for coordinating all these initiatives and placing them into the strategic plan of the organization.
Roles and responsibilities of a CDO
To ensure a digital transformation of an organization is successful, and digital leaders adequately run a digital strategy and initiate the necessary changes in organizations, their roles, and business priorities must be clearly defined. Firstly, they have the role of entrepreneurs, spokespersons, and leaders. An entrepreneur CDO is responsible for setting up a digital transformation strategy, researching IT innovation, and focusing on establishing a strong digital organization. Such a CDO is responsible for adapting business models with a focus on end users and meeting their expectations and requirements. Furthermore, the task of the chief digital evangelist is to inspire employees in the organization and to create a business culture that will support digital transformation. Given the many challenges that come up with the change, evangelists must train employees well and offer them new perspectives to bridge the gap in transformation. The last is that of a coordinator role, where it is the responsibility of linking the entire organization to the process of transformation (from the lowest levels to the leading ones) and coordinating all activities related to the process of transformation.
Given the demands and responsibilities of the job of CDOs, job positions for chief digital officers require a wide range of knowledge, skills, and experience. A person who is applying to a CDO's job needs to be interdisciplinary educated. Maybe there is going to be an all-in-one degree in business informatics. The right combination of informatics and economics is a benefit so the person in the job position gets all the necessary knowledge basics in all aspects needed for the job from university and acquires experience through a couple of years in practice. The main experience is required in management and organization competencies, not technical as can be assumed at first glance when we are thinking about ‘digital’ transformation. A Chief Digital Officer by developing a digital strategy begins the path of transformation in the organization. Using digital technology, s/he finds new business opportunities and focuses on continuous innovation in business by targeting customer needs.
Along with the aforementioned, CDOs' knowledge must also be fulfilled with business model analysis and business model transformation methods to succeed in digital transformation under the new business model. A digital officer must be a leader, a generator of change in the organization, with inspiration in new business opportunities provided by technology and innovation. All this is not possible to gain in regular education programs or higher education programs but needs to be tested and forged by some years of working experience in practice to get a broader picture and holistic approach to such a complex matter as the digital transformation of the enterprise.
Lastly, the mundane…
The tasks and everyday job routine of a CDO are rather complex than simple since s/he is in charge of digital organizational change and stands between two worlds — management (economic experts / domain experts) and IT experts (technology experts) that are not always on the same side. Making the bridge between current and future organizations, a CDO walks on the path of digital innovation in an organisational global environment alongside competition running faster every day. Because of all this, educational institutions in higher education need to make effort to develop new curriculums to answer these new needs and make interdisciplinary education for the future. These would enable a new breed of IT evangelists and project managers that would be able to drive current and future companies in the digital era. The Digital Era, which has already started needs to be shaken up by the globally widespread process of digital transformation and aspiration to the constant change in the future to meet customer needs and make a profit from now possible completely new business models.
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