The ‘Great IT Rebrand’: Restructuring IT for business success

Traditionally viewed as rock-solid and steady, the insurance industry is not exactly associated with taking big risks.

But Florida-based Brown & Brown Insurance put old-school conventions to the test when it joined a growing cadre of leading organizations remodeling IT to reflect the pervasive role of technology in business transformation.

Under Executive Vice President and CIO Gray Nester, BBIN traded up the legacy IT moniker for the modern-day Technology Solutions Group brand. Simultaneously, the monolithic IT organization was deconstructed into subgroups providing PC, cloud, infrastructure, security, and data services to the larger enterprise with associated solution leaders closely aligned to core business functions.

Nester and BBNI’s communications team partnered on a multilevel campaign to officially roll out the Technology Solutions entity and promote its newly-coined “techniculture” mission of leveraging technology to drive successful business outcomes.

“Techniculture is where technology, business, and culture collide,” says Nester, explaining his remodeling plan for IT. “We’ve broken up a large entity that required people to wait in line and put delivery people working on applications, business process improvement, and fintech innovation back in the hands of the business.”

With digital technologies clearly established as the central plank of business operations, efforts to reorganize, rebrand, and remodel IT are kicking into high gear.

Some, like BBNI’s Technology Solutions Group, are being renamed and restructured to orchestrate greater immersion in the business. Others are greenlighting parallel organizations, one in charge of traditional IT needs such as security and infrastructure and another for standing up digital platforms and products. Transformation offices have become a regular part of the IT landscape, and some companies are consolidating IT, operations, and other nontraditional functions under the reimagined jurisdiction of a CIO-plus role.

While there is no one-size-fits-all model, IT leaders are well situated to orchestrate organizational change.

For one thing, technology is so baked into the DNA of most enterprises, even companies not typically associated with being digital leaders can’t help but be tech-centric. There’s also the speed at which the digital footprint is evolving — a pace that is testing the ability of traditional IT structures to effectively deliver for the business. With so much at stake, CIOs are actively investing in people and processes to shift culture away from reactive order-taking. Rethinking IT structure serves as yet another catalyst for advancing tech-driven business strategy.

“There’s never been a better time to be a CIO, not just to get a seat at the table, but to be the one to bring the C-suite and company to the digital table,” says Dan Roberts, CEO of Ouellette & Associates Consulting, which offers services for developing future-ready IT leaders. “The best CIOs are orchestrating two paths — one where they are modernizing and building a solid foundation on rock, not sand, and the other where they are leading digital transformation. The trick is driving these concurrently, not linearly, because the pace of business moves so quickly.”

Breaking the mold

As the lines blur between business and technology, investment banking firm Edward Jones is refashioning IT along two parallel paths.

Longtime CIO Frank LaQuinta has been elevated to a multi-role post, serving as head of digital, data, and operations, with Kevin Adams, now head of technology, taking oversight of technology strategy, software engineering, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and support. LaQuinta brings a strategic background and digital mindset to help accelerate enterprise-level business strategies. Adams concentrates on the day-to-day of designing hybrid infrastructure, powering enterprise networks, implementing effective cybersecurity, and facilitating software engineering across the entire enterprise.

“Decentralizing that decision-making enables organizations to harness the full potential of whatever digital technologies they have to drive business growth in a rapidly changing market,” Adams says.

Having top-down leadership commitment is crucial to gaining buy-in and successfully executing IT restructuring at this scale, Adams says. “Having that vision and mission alignment helps connect the technology work to what the firm is trying to accomplish in terms of business outcomes,” he adds.

At Zoetis, a leader in animal health, the nature of IT is evolving through a redesign effort centered around branding, organizational structure, and cultural orientation.

The newly-named Zoetis Technology and Digital (ZTD) organization conveys the importance of using digital solutions and data insights to power business — one of six corporate priorities. To break down silos, ZTD colleagues are embedded in various functional areas, such as R&D, manufacturing, and commercial, making it easier to identify how and where technology can impact innovation and solve routine business challenges.

Even ZTD’s recruiting tactics are outside of the traditional IT mold. Today, there is heightened emphasis on attracting business-savvy talent comfortable with the application of technology, all while demonstrating a commitment to break-out differentiation in the animal healthcare space, according to Keith Sarbaugh, Zoetis CIO.

“We’re recruiting a different profile of a candidate than we would have 10 years ago,” Sarbaugh says. “It’s about finding talent who understand technology and our business and can put them together to positively impact animal health.”

Highlighting the importance of value delivery is another core tenet of the redefined ZTD culture. “It’s important to talk about investment and prioritization in a way that’s not about technology strategy, but about business strategy supported by technology,” he says.

Along with fostering tighter business alignment, technology leaders are instituting other types of organizational change to meet the needs of the moment. Some are rebalancing how they resource, replacing longstanding outsourcing arrangements with a concerted effort to build out internal competencies in areas such as agile development or DevSecOps or for technologies that have become integral to core business functions, notes Jim Alkone, CEO of Oleria, which markets security software.

Oversight of cybersecurity is another area routinely earmarked for change as technology continues to permeate the enterprise fabric.

While cybersecurity has traditionally been under IT’s wing, many firms are revamping reporting structures to create a direct line from the chief information security officer to the CEO. In fact, 36% of CSOs or CISOs now report to the CEO, according to the 2024 State of the CIO research. “This is recognition that security is a corporate function and covers all aspects of the business, not just the technology function,” Alkone says. “The approach is very effective in sending the right top-down tone that security is incredibly important.”

Getting culture right

To champion his reimagined vision for IT, BBNI’s Nester stresses the art of effective communication and the importance of a solid marketing campaign.

In partnership with corporate communications, Nester established the Techniculture brand and lineup of related events specifically designed to align technology, business, and culture in support of enterprise goals. Quarterly Techniculture town hall meetings anchored by both business and technology leaders keep the several hundred Technology Solutions team members abreast of business priorities and familiar with the firm’s money-making mechanics, including a window into how technology helps achieve specific revenue goals, Nester explains.  

“It’s a can’t-miss event and our largest team engagement — even more so than the CEO videos,” he contends.

The next pillar of the Techniculture foundation is Techniculture Live, an annual leadership summit. One third of the Technology Solutions Group, about 250 teammates by Nester’s estimates, participate in the event, which is not a deep dive into the latest technologies, but rather spotlights business performance and technology initiatives that have been most impactful to achieving corporate goals.

The third Techniculture component, launched this year, is an online learning platform available to all teammates for engaging with relevant content on their own time. “They can dial in and watch a 30-minute training on how we’re using AI inside the business while having lunch,” he says.

Traditional business metrics are proving the new IT reorg and brand is bearing fruit. “Business performance and technology investment have tripled in the time since we made this transition,” Nester says. “The business doesn’t continue to invest money if they’re not seeing direct results.”

For Little Caesars Pizza, the most significant cultural shift has been steering the IT organization away from a cost center mentality to a full-throated embrace of Profit & Loss (P&L) responsibility, according to Anita Klopfenstein, the pizza giant’s global CIO.

The transition, initiated five years ago, was designed to recoup a portion of the digital fees and sizable technology investments as innovations like the Pizza Portal mobile order pickup system and cloud-based point-of-sale platforms take hold at both company-owned and franchise locations.

“We bake ROI into every project, addressing headcount needs, expenses, and anything else that takes us through the approval process,” Klopfenstein says. “It’s required us to rethink how we work — to build strong relationships with business partners to see what impacts them and to work closely with operations and services.”

To move the needle on IT’s P&L focus, Klopfenstein credits tight collaboration with the CEO, which opened doors to additional funding and helped clear change management and broader organizational hurdles. A partnership with the finance team helped get everyone on the same page regarding requirements for a P&L lens.

On the talent front, Little Caesars’ IT organization modernized some of its hiring criteria, targeting candidates acclimated to what’s required to run a company, familiar with how to read a general ledger, and versed in how to engage the business. “By rebranding and having business-savvy people, we have an ability to root through good ideas and bad ideas quickly,” she explains. “This enables us to leapfrog over our competition.”

Outside of broader business goals, there is an upside for IT staffers who successfully transition to a P&L orientation. “Being right there with the business, they understand how to make a profit and see that their work is actually helping a customer, a guest, or a franchise,” Klopfenstein adds. “They see a product from beginning to end and it’s pretty rewarding.”

A brighter future for IT leadership

As the architecture for IT organizations gets redrawn, it opens new pathways for CIOs to further raise their profile and expand their remit beyond the usual technology responsibilities.

Chris Bedi, who served as ServiceNow’s chief digital information officer for eight years, rode that wave to a recent appointment to chief customer officer for the provider of cloud-based platforms used to manage digital workflows.

Bedi says the promotion — not a common one among CIOs — was possible, in part, because of the outsize responsibilities he took on during his digital lead tenure.  

“There’s a tremendous amount of change driven by technology, only accelerated by AI,” Bedi says. “As IT organizations do more, you are starting to see CIOs gain a much larger remit in functions that are traditionally foreign to CIOs.”