IT as a corporate function makes sense when it’s for the sake of shared services, consolidating common infrastructure, architecture, and applications across the business. IT is an annoyance when it starts trying to push lines of business to deploy technologies that don’t make sense for them. In some cases, visionary IT leaders can help drive revenue increases and cost savings directly into the business unit P&Ls – but these examples are the exception and not the rule.
Officers appointed to drive “digital transformation” across the entire business can be even more grandiose than their IT counterparts. I had a conversation last week with a Chief Digital Officer at a pharma manufacturer – he is tasked with driving digital strategy across every function in the business including IT, marketing, sales, finance, manufacturing, procurement, logistics, HR, product strategy, etc. This guy has a pure IT background, and he has been at this company for less than a year…
This is a bad idea! The Grand Unified Corporate Digital Strategy is doomed to fail. The omnipotent Chief Digital Officer doesn’t make sense.
Instead, individual functions and lines of business should appoint their own digital leaders who are grounded with an understanding of the environments they aim to digitize. And they should not be reporting to corporate Chief Digital Officers – they should instead be reporting to functional leaders or line of business leaders. They should be reporting to people who understand the business objectives for those groups.