More CIOs are turning to an emerging technology practice called robotic process automation (RPA) to streamline enterprise operations and reduce costs. With RPA, businesses can automate mundane rules-based business processes, enabling business users to devote more time to higher-value tasks. Others see RPA fitting into a larger context, as they take a more deliberate path…
Until the early 2000s, I observed dozens of IT projects simply substituting tech for physical or manual processes. I decided to bring process innovation skills into my group at my previous employer Cognizant. We found that process innovation opportunities abound, and we started exploiting the opportunities. That was then. What about now? As I showed…
In this edition of CIO Quick Takes, four IT leaders reveal what they think vendors need to know about the CIO role and the buying process. Recent data trends have given this evergreen topic new life and urgency. According to the 2017 State of the CIO Survey, 50 percent of CIOs say their time is…
When Oracle first announced its agreement to acquire NetSuite, back in July 2016, there was widespread agreement in the tech industry that the deal could allow Oracle to serve a broader range of customers, including smaller businesses, expand to more vertical industries and more countries, and accelerate Oracle’s application software push into the cloud. The…
Ask a CIO how he or she quantifies the impact of their digital transformations and you may get a funny look, like you told tasteless joke. The reality is that many CIOs don’t have metrics for gauging the success of digital projects, such as new ecommerce platforms, mobile apps and chatbots. But CIOs who fail…
In the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Rear Window, James Stewart portrays a paranoid magazine photographer convinced one of his neighbors murdered his wife. Stewart’s L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries character is isolated in his small Greenwich Village apartment recovering from a broken leg. He passes the time watching his neighbors through a telephoto lens as he sits…
Data analytics has emerged as one of the most important business and technology differentiators for organizations, giving them the power to draw keen insights about virtually any aspect of their operations and thereby gain an edge on the competition. Research firm Gartner earlier this year predicted that 2017 would be the year data and analytics…
What is outsourcing? Outsourcing is a business practice in which services or job functions are farmed out to a third party. In information technology, an outsourcing initiative with a technology provider can involve a range of operations, from the entirety of the IT function to discrete, easily defined components, such as disaster recovery, network services,…
I’ve interviewed many CIOs for their insights on the transformation of IT into a strategic asset. Many of their success stories appear in my book, “The Strategic CIO: Changing the Dynamics of the Business Enterprise” and in my CIO.com column, “Transforming IT for Business Success.” I’ve also been reading a number of books on digital…
One of the habits from Stephen Covey’s bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to begin with the end in mind. Putting that in today’s business context, organizations need to figure out what digital transformation means for their business and what their goals are before they go throwing a bunch of new…