FEATURE : CIO ’ S PRIORITY

Scott Glenn , Partner and Lead of US CIO advisory group , BearingPoint , says CIOs need to drive the C-suite to welcome transformative change .

As many organizations ’ legacy IT systems are reaching the end of their lives , change is business-critical and Digital Transformation is shifting from a ‘ nice to have ’ to ‘ necessary to exist ’.

With every company now running on technology , regardless of size or industry , it ’ s imperative to have a digitization plan . Unfortunately , there is no one answer to achieving IT transformation .

As the Lead of the US CIO Advisory Group at BearingPoint , I have been involved in many Digital Transformation projects and had the privilege of advising the CIOs responsible for managing them . After 30 years in the business , I ’ ve distilled some key learnings from my time in the industry down into five common pitfalls to avoid for any CIO tasked with the daunting challenge of a Digital Transformation project .

1 . Focus on what is possible tomorrow , not what is happening today

One of the biggest traps that businesses fall into when starting out on their Digital Transformation journey is focusing too heavily on their current operations . Transformation means change and it is no surprise that internal teams are often initially resistant to this . There is comfort in familiar processes and systems , after all . However , to get to the next level , disruptive change is necessary , meaning CIOs need to help internal teams get comfortable with stepping out of their comfort zones .

36 INTELLIGENTCIO LATAM www . intelligentcio . com