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| Graeme Thompson, SVP/CIO Informatica |
- Roger Hale, CISO, Informatica;
- David Linthicum, SVP Cloud Technology Partners;
- Steve Durbin, Managing director of the UK’s Information Security Forum;
- Kevin Fleet, VP Professional Services, Informatica;
- Andrew McIntyre, VP Technology, Chicago Cubs; and
- Sally Jenkins, CMO, Informatica
The New CIO role
A key point highlighted throughout the series is that the CIO’s
role has shifted radically. No longer focused
on using IT to improve the internal productivity
of business functions, today’s best information executives partner with functional peers to deliver new
business models and associated revenue streams. For them, the main challenges is
a constant battle with legacy technology and legacy thinking. For software
companies, this painful shift could be from an established initial license
purchase and annual maintenance revenue model to a software subscription model. Product-wise this may also include shifting from custom offerings to
delivering fixed and standardize software services. CIOs must help the C-suite move away from functional level optimization and
towards an enterprise success focus that provides scalable real-time data integration.
This data foundation must also include an analytics platform that extracts
application data, delivers visibility across each end-to-end business process (i.e., hire-to-retire, procure-to-pay,
campaign-to-opportunity) and optimizes outcomes for customers and the entire
company.
While the traditional CIO purview was mostly limited to IT
infrastructure details (i.e., # of
servers, wireless access points, storage devices), the new CIO must be equally
aware of the number of corporate database instances, which ones have customer
data and who has access to this data. Data is the foundation of digital
transformation so the CIO must be as focused on the data as they are on the
physical aspects of IT. They must effectively
leverage digital assets and escalate the use of data above the operational
function that creates it to target enterprise
level opportunities. The CIO is in a unique position because they are:
- Best positioned to understand end to end processes and functions; and
- Close to emerging technologies that enable them to identify profitable IT implementation opportunities.
Manage data as currency
The Big Pivot Episode 6 presents a thought exercise that compares the CIO’s
role managing data to that of the CFO managing currency by asking:
- Does the CFO let each functional organization keep and manage the revenue it makes?
- Does the CFO leave it up to the goodwill of each functional manager to share their profit with other functional units?
- Does the CFO only have a vague idea of the amount of money that flows in and out of the corporation?
These questions may seem absurd, but if data is valuable,
why doesn’t the CIO manage data like the CFO manages currency?
Data is the foundation of digital business, and digital transformation success is defined
by how well an organization leverages its data to create new opportunities. This
viewpoint demands the use of secure, timely, accurate, correctly
sourced, context applicable and appropriately organized data. While previous implications of
bad data were small (an occasional reporting issue or individual process error),
today’s businesses and entire industries are dependent on digital assets for
success. Maintaining
the value and reliability of underlying data is now an existential priority.
Admittedly, treating data as such a valuable business asset
is problematic because most companies try
to avoid the political and structural disruption that comes with breaking down the functional
silos and norms of the past. A practical way forward is possible, however, by
linking technology investment to quantifiable business value. Functional
optimizations do not always lead to
desired enterprise optimizations so the CIO and senior leadership team must
work together in thinking about the best use of data for the benefit of the
entire company rather than any specific function. To realize this, changes
across the entire system, and not just a functional area, may be required.
Avoid the practice of linking data and ownership to the same functional area
because this gets in the way of sharing data across the enterprise.
The new data privacy imperative
In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and
other data privacy regulations are up leveling global data security, privacy
regulations and control objectives. By building a globally enforceable
framework for data lifecycle management, GDPR is forcing many international
companies to classify and protect every individual’s data. Some of the challenges
of this new regulation include:
- The need to be able to closely track all data related to the privacy of an individual;
- A requirement to demonstrate privacy by design in the handling of all privacy information;
- An ability to demonstrate to regulators and data subjects the preservation of privacy information integrity through every stage of the information lifecycle; and
- Enforcement of the right of any individual to demand the erasure of data related to them.
To continue operating,
companies must augment their tradition data protection practice of protecting the network and data center environment with operational
processes that implement data protection that travels with the data. This includes operations in the mobile
environment as well. Data must be secured as an asset and not just as a process
by-product.
A mandatory requirement of GDPR is the appointment of the Data
Protection Officer, a role that serves as a focal point for data protection activities
and related educational processes across the enterprise.
These individuals are responsible for
handling personal data and must be able to work closely
with other governance functions (i.e., info security, legal, record mgmt.,
audit). New data protection procedures must also
be fitted into project planning, external service contracts, procurement
processes, data portability, and new internal processes that uphold data
erasure rights.
Analytics changes business
The most important takeaway
from this series is understanding the need to tie data insights to business
outcomes. At its core, digital transformation means shifting from a limited competition based on physical assets to
a global competition based on digital assets. The CIO see the business uniquely
because, by necessity, they think of the enterprise as a connected system of
processes and applications. This viewpoint can be used to effectively and
efficiently drive change across the entire enterprise because fundamental
business transformations are driven by
data analytics that creates opportunities
that didn’t previously exist. Incremental change
is no longer viable, and products are no longer a selection of features. Today’s competitive offering must be
able to use data to inform itself on how it is
being used, fix itself if it sees a
problem and then uses that data to solve
the same or related problems in every other environment in which it operates.
Andrew McIntyre, VP of Technology for the Chicago Cubs on how analytics changes business
This post is brought to you by Informatica and IDG. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Informatica.
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