CIO Straight Talk - Issue 7 - 14

14

Who Leads the Change?

THE PILLARS INTERTWINED

It's a frequently asked question these days: Who

The adoption of our Integrated Digital Service

will drive our digital initiatives? This often leads to

Platform has been a massive undertaking, and it has

a follow-up question: Do we need a Chief Digital

produced significant business benefits, including

Officer? And there's sometimes a further question,

improved customer satisfaction levels. So what sort of

one that rightfully worries many CIOs: Do we still

advice can I share from our experience?

need a Chief Information Officer?
My answer to those questions: The title doesn't

For one thing, our earlier operational excellence
initiative provided an absolutely necessary foundation

really matter so long as you have one integrated

for our digitization initiative. I think in a traditional

organization driving digitalization. What you don't

industry like ours, many companies don't yet have that

want is two separate functions, one headed up by

operational excellence piece in place, which would

a CDO and the other led by the CIO. That will result

limit the effectiveness of their digitization projects.

in a non-integrated approach that precludes a

There's an echo from the year 2000 here: A company

comprehensive strategy like the one I've described.

would say, "We need an e-commerce site," they would

So is the CIO well-positioned to take the lead?

create one, a customer would place an order on the

The problem is that, in many cases, the CIO is

site - and the internal sales team would then print it

associated in people's minds with the two phases

out, go to the office next door, and retype it into the

we went through at Schindler before our digital

existing order system.

initiative. The first is IT rationalization, which is

Another crucial takeaway is something we knew

obviously something CIOs are expert in. The second

but that was underscored by our experience: A

is operational excellence, optimizing your internal

digitization program needs to be comprehensive

business processes. In recentyears CIOs have

rather than piecemeal because its various elements

gained a lot of credibility in this area, too, as they've

are interconnected and therefore can reinforce one

overseen global reengineering projects.

another. You might say that the four pillars of our

But when it comes to leading the third phase -
digital - where you're transforming the business
model with really disruptive innovation, most

digital platform initiative weren't freestanding but
were "intertwined."
One goal of the program was to provide quicker

executives don't see the CIO as being the right

response to service requests. In the past, a facilities

person for the job. This isn't because IT is the wrong

manager with an elevator out of service would contact

function to lead this change but because many CIOs

our call center, and the call center would try to find

aren't personally viewed as an innovation-leader,

a technician available to take the job. But the service

driving-change, risk-taker type of individual.

center wouldn't know who was where. People would

And if the CIO isn't this kind of person, I'd argue
that he or she shouldn't be in the CIO role. That's
because, ideally, the CIO role will evolve to include
responsibility for the digital transformation.

be occupied with an existing service call. Some
technicians might even be out of cell phone coverage.
Clearly, using smart phones to link our service
technicians with the call center would help, as would
the detailed information about Schindler products that
could be loaded onto the phones.
But simply giving our service technicians iPhones
so that they'd always be connected and have
troubleshooting information at their fingertips wasn't
enough. We needed to integrate this digital solution
for our employees with the digital solution we had

In the movie Tron, Jeff Bridges plays a computer
programmer who is digitized by an experimental
laser into a mainframe where programs are living
entities appearing in the likeness of the humans
that created them.

1982

1982

created for our customers, so that technicians and

The first commercial compact disc, or CD, is
produced, a 1979 recording of Claudio Arrau
performing Chopin waltzes.
CIO Straight Talk - Issue 7

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of CIO Straight Talk - Issue 7
