Tag: EnterpriseIT

The IT Lineup That Wins

IT is a knowledge economy, and its growth is highly dependent on people, skills, and expertise. As technology proliferates into every human space, the demand for advanced skills has skyrocketed. These skills are critical for better products, reliable services, and efficient operations.

Every enterprise — financial institutions, government agencies, hospitals, manufacturers, universities, and large corporates — has an in-house IT department (Enterprise IT). Headcount can range from a few dozen in small and medium enterprises to several thousand in very large ones. Their work underpins the phenomenal growth of businesses, smart devices, and digital interactions we experience today at work, in studies, and in daily life.

Enterprise IT is a technology powerhouse. Tech chiefs are often looking for deep specializations. But what exactly defines success, given the hefty responsibilities, impact, and financial resources involved?

Winning The Trust
As a seasoned tech chief in a large enterprise, I find it hard to define success because it varies across industries. Some businesses are judged by profit-and-loss, but this does not apply to governments, non-profits, or social enterprises where strict budget-and-expense guidelines prevail.

Is IT just a tool? Not exactly. It is an enabler, a catalyst, and a strategic partner to the business. After all, IT is a people’s business and rightfully, we should define success from the client’s perspective.

A successful Enterprise IT organization creates new business value, delivers a seamless user experience, and provides a secure and stable digital environment. Ultimately, it must earn the trust of leaders, the respect of the business, and the hearts of users.

A Formation To Win
Like English football (soccer), Enterprise IT is a team sport. It wins or loses as a team, and role diversity matters most. Every player on the field is recruited for their specialty, playing their best in their specific role to win the game.

In Enterprise IT, cybersecurity and identity management specialists are like goalkeepers and defenders: they anticipate risks and rigorously defend networks, systems, and privacy. On the goal-scoring side, experienced application developers and ERP specialists are the strikers, minimizing rework and delivering business-winning applications. In midfield, project managers play the pivotal role, dictating schedules and pace, integrating disparate processes and modular code across teams, and ensuring seamless user experiences.

We value technical brilliance, but also teamwork. A team of brilliant professionals may win matches, but without soft skills — collaboration, communication, and adaptability — they won’t win the league.

Collaboration
In soccer, we applaud skills like tackling, dribbling, and passing accuracy. But beneath these is the essence of soft skills. Players must understand space on the pitch, timing, movement, and adapt strategies to counter opponents. For example, every defender in the last line moves up together to set an offside trap. A moment later, strikers make instinctive runs to the near post or find space in the box for a header.

Technology is also collaborative by nature. Agile, DevOps, and Virtualization thrive on cross-functional expertise and a collaborative mindset.

In IT, individualism has no place. Seniority matters little; every role is crucial. A single service agent can make or break the user experience. We may have brilliant developers and AI experts, but clunky interfaces, illogical workflows, or sluggish system response can completely turn off users. Countless business disruptions arise from lapses in seemingly minor roles — code review, load simulation, and data cleansing. These may not demand high compensation, but failures in them can tarnish reputations and hurt the bottom line.

Communication
Communication remains the greatest challenge for many tech professionals, shaped by years of technical training and back-office work. But Enterprise IT has moved front and center, powering online banking, e-commerce, user analytics, and smart devices. No longer just behind the scenes, IT teams now meet business partners and users to gather requirements, balance usability with security, and design products — areas where many struggle to articulate in business terms.

Another challenge is addressing diverse audiences: corporate leaders, business managers, and user communities, most of whom care little about technical intricacies. If a scam alert, design change, or system upgrade isn’t explained clearly, the audience tunes out instantly. Communication should always consider purpose, intent, and business significance, connecting clearly to the audience’s domain.

Adaptive to Changes
Technology has a short lifespan; skills quickly become commodities, and niche roles fade fast. Coupled with corporations’ relentless pursuit of efficiency and cost control, should the IT workforce be worried?

Not necessarily. Every technological transition creates both new opportunities and cost pressures. With shifts to cloud services, Software-as-a-Service, virtualization, AI-assisted coding, and anomaly detection, we’ve seen new roles emerge like multi-cloud integration, identity management across heterogeneous systems, prompt engineering, compliance, and service-level management.

Jobs are reshaped, not lost. Knowledge evolves and rarely becomes obsolete. Adaptability allows stronger minds and quick learners to thrive in a fast-moving environment.

Conclusion
Enterprise IT shares much with a winning soccer team: brilliant individuals specializing in diverse roles, collaborating and covering for each other, adapting to changes, and communicating well with the business to sustain success. The only difference? The compensation doesn’t quite match that of the top footballers on the global stage!




Copyedit: ChatGPT-5

Just Too Many Digital Chiefs

Like a medical specialist providing in-depth and expert care in a specific area, the tech industry has seen a similar shake-up in recent times, resulting in a plethora of high-sounding titles such as Chief Analytics Officer (CAO), Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO), Chief Data Officer (CDO), Chief Digital Transformation Officer (CDTO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), Chief Machine Learning Officer (CMLO), and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). This trend is ongoing, as evidenced by the myriad of executive programs offered by Ivy League colleges and training schools for those keen to qualify.

The rapid tech advancement has caught many enterprises off guard. The surge of chief titles like CAIO and CMLO appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to the phenomenal growth of generative AI. In the past few years, many CISO appointments were fast-tracked to comply with regulatory mandates in some parts of the world, requiring a dedicated chief for cybersecurity amidst escalating cyber breaches and privacy invasions. On the other hand, the once in-demand CKO hiring of the late 1990s is fast-fading, likely ousted by the CDO and CAO amid a shifting focus to big data and analytics. Lastly, the de facto tech chief, the CIO, has seen its technology portfolio mostly taken over by the CTO, often to spare focus on technology.

Obviously, we do not need a management professor to tell us that too many chiefs without a chief of the chiefs would be a grave mistake in corporate governance. For instance, should the CISO be accountable for the security of an AI system? Intuitively, yes, provided the CISO has veto power over the AI because accountability requires control. From frivolous data to business insights and invaluable knowledge, should the CKO be rejuvenated and made responsible for all these seemingly discrete domains, thus offloading responsibilities from and right-sizing the CIO and CDO? Ironically, does the CDTO really fit the bill of a digital chief with goals to transform business? Realistically, must all the chiefs bear the same titles and compensations if their job sizes differ?

Nobody would argue if the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) were to be the overall digital chief, given how tech has been transforming industries and businesses. A level closer to the head of the organization allows for more direct communication, level brainstorming, and faster decision-making. However, this is impractical given the day-to-day management chores. For non-tech, non-profit, and end-user enterprises, IT is mostly a tool, not a strategy, and an expense rather than an investment that hardly creeps into the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of the CEO. Also, it takes more than a tech-savvy CEO to oversee the work among the digital chiefs, dealing with operational issues and personnel conflicts.

It is an opportune time to rehash the chiefs’ departments if you have close to a double numeric of digital chiefs, especially when some have no direct reports. The CIO debuted in 1980, and the CTO in 1990, when the first batch of CIOs had already been functioning well for a decade before relinquishing their tech function to the CTO. The CIO nomenclature has suffered from a birth defect with a missing specific – Technology – despite it being a substantial part of their roles. Given the continuous advancement and escalating reliance on technology, it makes perfect sense for a new chief function, the Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO), to take on both portfolios. In fact, the CITO role has emerged in recent years as a response to the increasing importance of technology in organizations, likely evolving from the CIO and CTO roles.

There are CISOs reporting to an independent entity, such as the Board, CEO, or a corporate chief on risk management, citing autonomy without being undermined by the CIO or any other chief. Unlike audits, the CISO is not an inspect-and-control function; it is the inherent cybersecurity knowledge and skills that are most valued. The CISO should be an integral part of the CIO department, incorporating security design and operating requirements into any tech development. The CISO should also be the party to endorse tech implementation and operational changes. Checks and balances can be achieved through independent audits, external consultancy, and certifications like ISO 27001 Information Security Management System.

Data does not lie but stops short of saying anything if it is not clean. Like clean water to humans, pristine data is the lifeline to AI, and the CAIO, CDO, CAO, and CMLO, despite each taking a different spin on it. The CDO should define relevant policies for data ownership, cleansing, protection, sharing, and retention, govern and coordinate efforts among the business units to ensure compliance and resolve disputes. Separately, the CAO focuses on data analytics, using tools like Excel, Python, SQL, and SPSS to justify business actions and decisions and subsequently measure performance. Raw data is akin to unrefined ore; it’s abundant and contains potential value, but in its unprocessed state, it lacks clarity and insights. Combining the CDO and CAO functions into a Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) provides oversight and management controls for transforming raw data into valuable insights.

The CMLO, equipped with strong mathematics, statistics, and coding knowledge, builds algorithmic models for applications such as generative AI, behavior analysis, and pattern recognition. The CAIO, with a similar background, spearheads AI direction, strategies, ethical use, and staff training across the entire enterprise. It is an ecosystem where the chiefs interact and work to embed AI seamlessly in all business functions.

In the context of the CDTO, the latest kid on the block, Tech and Digital are not interchangeable. As the name implies, digital transformation aims to modernize the business by leveraging progressive tech advancements. Transformation is disruptive, often requiring mindset changes, new learning, and critical thinking to debureaucratize the organization. Besides possessing necessary business acumen, having a clear mandate and authority to make decisions is crucial for effectively addressing and overcoming objections. The emergence of the CDTO is timely, fueled by attainable technologies such as Cloud, RPA (Robotic Process Automation), next-generation ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and the prevalence of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) that enable businesses to own their transformation.

Except for the CDTO, all tech chiefs have either a share of operational duties or a high stake in them. In a unified approach, tech-related activities such as strategic planning, manpower forecasting, and budgeting should be integrated and coordinated across the enterprise, rather than being siloed among separate digital chiefs. This collaborative approach ensures alignment, efficiency, and effective resource allocation, enabling the organization to achieve its goals and business priorities cohesively and strategically. As the saying goes, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” By working together, we can build a strong and resilient organization that thrives in today’s fast-paced and competitive landscape.

Merging the CIO and CTO functions into CITO and combining the CDO and CAO into CDAO are pivotal steps prior to integrating the CAIO, CMLO, and CISO functions into the same CITO office. Partnership hinges on individuals, but an integrated system, once built, will be long-lasting regardless of personnel changes and how technology evolves. Transformation is not a transient function, and the CDTO, primarily a business function, should stay abreast of technological changes and continue to lead the effort.

With the optimized hierarchy, the CITO, with combined functions of CIO, CTO, CAIO, CMLO, and CISO, will report to the CEO or their deputy, as will the CDTO and CDAO with combined functions of CDO and CAO. Knowledge will become on-the-fly with proper safeguards when generative AI becomes more intelligent and widespread, thus diminishing the CKO’s role further.

Organizational changes are risky. Dealing with potentially inflated titles, re-designation, and job resizing may unsettle many incumbents. It reminds one of those heated debates between centralizing and decentralizing tech functions in a large enterprise. Ultimately, organizations persevering through these changes will benefit from agility to cost savings, clarity of ownership, accountability, less politicking, a healthier workplace, and, finally, emerging as leaders in their industry.



*Copyedited by ChatGPT, https://chat.openai.com/chat