CIOs have led their organizations through massive waves of disruption with digital transformation over the past two years. However, as the business landscape changes, so does the role of the CIO.
Evolving customer and employee expectations, coupled with the rise of the hybrid workforce, are creating a new imperative for CIOs to ensure that the digital investments made during the pandemic are generating revenue for the enterprise.
As automation is largely seen as the new fabric of the digital enterprise, what is the role of hyper-automation in helping CIOs achieve their goals, and how will the role of the CIO change in 2022 and beyond?
CIOs as change managers
IT continues to play an important role in driving organizational change, with 86% of CIOs surveyed describing their role as focused on digitization and innovation, and most noting that they spend a large portion of their time effecting transformation across the enterprise.
CIOs are also significantly more likely than leaders of any other function to expect increases in their IT budgets this year, demonstrating board confidence in their abilities to drive change.
In addition to increasing operational efficiency, transforming existing business processes and improving employee productivity, automation leading to higher business performance is quickly becoming higher on their agenda. More CIOs are expected to automate business and IT process efforts to streamline operations while taking on new revenue responsibilities.
Avoiding transformation and automation silos
Automation is a no-brainer when it comes to cost and productivity. However, while many organizations automate at all levels, most have yet to reach a “peak of innovation and business transformation” that optimizes their investments, according to Sam Higgins, principal analyst at Forrester.
Often, companies that employ a high level of automation still suffer from what Higgins calls “automation myopia.” This can manifest itself in companies that take siloed approaches to automation or have the misconception that a single type of automation technology can solve all types of business problems. These piecemeal approaches to automation inevitably hinder transformation and create technical debt that ends up compromising future transformation investments.
Today, business is moving faster than ever, requiring organizations to be more agile and efficient to keep pace. To do so, they must rethink the way they think about automation and look to adopt a diverse but complementary set of technologies that can efficiently and effectively support the ecosystem of teams, partners and consumers they serve.
A good place to start is by digitizing document workflows with tools like Adobe Acrobat Sign to help improve the customer experience, procurement and onboarding, while reducing risk with enterprise-grade security features.
Digital Transformation in the Post-COVID World
As we look to accelerate our way out of the pandemic, the hybrid workforce has created different digital transformation needs. Work arrangements involving different locations and devices can create friction points that can be addressed through hyper automation.
To keep teams engaged and productive, organizations must deliver personalized and seamless experiences to employees, just as they aim to do with customers.
For this to succeed, companies must redouble their investments in hyper automation and examine every touchpoint and process to determine where efficiency and speed can be improved through automation.
Hyper automation is proving to be one of the most important facets of digital transformation that CIOs must master to achieve their goals. By elevating their transformation focus from tactical to strategic, CIOs can enable their organizations to keep pace with the changing needs of the business, their employees and their customers.
Source: Adobe Blog