“Doing Digital” vs. “Going Digital”

“Digital” is so hot right now that the word is losing definition—or rather, it’s picking up multiple definitions that overlap and confuse the conversations and strategies of many IT leaders. Your business is being digitized—you’re building mobile and web applications, deploying them, creating new customer-engagement opportunities.

But when the topic is digital transformation of IT—the way that digital technologies are completely upending long-established business models and quite literally changing business and the world—we’re talking about more than your effective consumer-facing phone app. Digital transformation is not about ecommerce. It’s not about “doing business online” or “reaching customers.”

It’s about disruption.

Now, the best CIOs have no illusions about that term. iRise hosted a CIO roundtable event in New York a few weeks back where acclaimed IT strategist and author Peter High led off a talk on CIOs as change agents, and we were amazed at how vocal our audience was about the fear of being “ubered” and the strategies they were deploying to keep their companies—and themselves—relevant. And they made it clear: It’s not easy.

Separating digital as in “modern business table stakes” from the digital that’s a “transformative game-changer” is difficult. So what does a CIO do?

The best ones I know are finding ways to bring the conversation to the business leaders, of course. They’re also surrounding themselves with the right people, ones who get the threat and promise of digital disruption. That means the right managers and line employees, and the best external partners. A strategic challenge demands strategic thinking, and if your organization can’t provide that vision, you’re alone in the middle of the ocean—just you and the sharks.

iRise is focused on improving the quality and speed of software development, so we often see customers facing the challenge of moving as quickly, and innovatively, as the market demands. An individual CIO’s pain point may be a cutting-edge customer-facing app or the legacy software and infrastructure on the back end. Either way, solving that choke point is vital to any other improvement in your organization’s dexterity in this digital age.

But our perspective isn’t the only one, and after years of learning so much through the exchange of ideas at our CIO events, we’ve decided to take that conversation “digital.” In late June, we launched Velocity, a monthly newsletter in which we’ll be talking to the smartest thinkers in the enterprise IT space about all the ways IT leaders can tackle the challenges of digital transformation—from their own journey as business-driving innovators, to dealing with challenges like Agile at scale and the IT talent crisis.

We’re hoping to add a lot of clarity to the noise around the topic of digital transformation. I invite you to read our first articles at irise.com/velocity (including one by Peter High on CIOs as change agents, and one in which UX expert Jose Coronado discusses the importance of design to a CIO’s success) and to subscribe to the monthly newsletter.