On-demand Webcast | The New Era of Leadership: IT Leaders Expected to Guide Post-Pandemic Strategies

The start of the pandemic in 2020 saw CIOs providing an immediate focus on enabling remote work, providing employees with scaled collaboration tools and secure connections. Two years later, organizations and businesses need to come up with new strategies to keep up with the ongoing pandemic-driven operational changes and the increase in digitization, presenting both an opportunity and a challenge for IT decision-makers.

More than ever before, IT decision-makers are now facing a different world as they shift from their original roles and responsibilities, to now becoming more involved in driving digital transformation within their companies.

In SAP Concur’s latest webinar, Brian Veloso, Managing Director, SAP Concur Canada, delved into the new expectations for IT decision makers as digitization increases. He was joined by Farhaz Thobani, Managing Director, Kyndryl and Fawn Annan, CEO of IT World Canada.

So… what are the biggest challenges that IT decision-makers are facing today?

According to Fawn, the biggest challenge right now is the delay in accomplishing IT projects due to lack of staff. The high demand for digital transformation has created a backlog which was then further delayed by the ‘Great Resignation,’ a trend that saw an overwhelming number of employees quitting their jobs. Finding the right resources and skills has become increasingly difficult and costly, presenting a huge ongoing challenge. Security and resiliency have also been presented as a challenge for IT decision-makers, as mentioned by Farhaz. The past two years have seen infrastructures being deeply impacted by security issues as more and more businesses faced unexpected cyberthreats.

Looking ahead to the next year, Farhaz and Fawn both agree that although the top priority for IT-leaders will differ across IT departments, there is an opportunity to focus on employee and client retention. The pandemic saw a change in how organizations interact internally with their employees and with their clients (I.e. Digital formats, AI experiences). Given these new ways of working, it is imperative that both CIO and CTO work alongside CEOs and HR professionals in a new ecosystem of influence to formulate the most effective ways to keep employees and clients satisfied.

With inflation and supply chain issues arising and increasing costs, organizations have now looked to IT decision-makers to step in to help drive efficiencies and ensure business continuity with digital tools. In order for IT decision-makers to cut costs and drive growth, Farhaz suggests adopting automation to help digitize aspects of businesses that are not creating value so other tasks can be prioritized. The immediate value from this will allow IT professionals more time to be a part of larger conversations at a board-room level, especially ones about digitization.

However, to drive effective growth and reach digitization goals, Fawn stresses the importance of presenting a comprehensive business case to top executives. Using the correct terminology and quantitative data to provide details on how digitization will improve customer service as well as focusing on employee engagement are all key details to include. In order to move ahead, it is essential to remove barriers and work in partnership to address digital transformation.  

Another key area businesses should focus on as they tackle challenges is collaboration between finance and IT decision-makers. Farhaz firmly believes that if both departments do not work together, they will be working against each other, therefore reducing progress. Most organizations now have a finance specialist sitting with the IT department to scope out and build business cases related to resilience and other digital transformation objectives.

CIOs must work with CFOs to provide teams with a broader triage of what’s going on within the business, to help streamline and be cost effective. Fawn emphasizes that without business intelligence, organizations won’t optimize the real value of technology. CIO’s must provide the tools necessary for digital transformation and explain the benefits of them within the finance department.

To hear more insights about the how the roles of IT Decision-Makers will continue to evolve during the shift to digitization, watch the full webinar on demand.