We all have landed in the Post COVID era. I am not saying from the point of finding the vaccines, which is perhaps still a long way but in the economic sense. All businesses across the industries have rebooted in more than ways – from business models to service offerings to new modes of serving the customers. Technology leaders became the most sought after warriors inside the organization as they had to overnight build the digital infrastructure to ensure business continuity. Now, as we begin to settle into the new normal, CIO’s have a more significant responsibility of working strategically with the business leaders to build Organization 2.0.
Organization 2.0 will invariably be a Digital-first business and will demand the CIO create value differentiation in the market place. Here is a 5-step action guide for the Post COVID CIO:
- Reduce the burn rate of the team – This is the perfect time to cut the slack that exists in the team, prepare to tackle the long road to economic recovery by cutting costs on expensive resources. This means CIO has to be smarter to evaluate and use off-shore teams or on-demand talent pool without sacrificing the quality of delivery.
- Retire high maintenance applications – Applications that are a cost burden on the infrastructure and are requiring huge on-site or off-shore teams to manage should be looked at retiring. The two-fold approach is to rearchitect applications that are resource-efficient and migrate from on-prem to cloud.
- Automate, Automate, and Automate – Using Robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence, almost every aspect of business can achieve higher productivity, repeatability, and accuracy.
- Evaluate your technology vendors – This is the perfect time to evaluate your technology vendors across software, hardware, and services. Breakaway from vendors who have you locked in annual contracts by replacing them with subscription-based vendors; replace expensive staffing partners; retire technologies that have lower adoption inside the business.
- Build and strengthen the new business model – Digital commerce is here to stay and has achieved a momentum that has forced organizations to embrace this business model wholeheartedly. This means all products or services will have to be produced and delivered in on-demand mode.
Many CIOs are already on this path by making their organizations resilient to wither this storm and also be leaders on the path to recovery in their industry. Every crisis is an opportunity for the leader to unlock their potential and scale new heights. While some of the changes suggested here take time, others can be swift so that it creates the oxygen mask your business needs now.
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