Published on the 13/03/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
In 2004 the importance of technology in shaping business was not even a top-five consideration for CEOs. Now they rate it as the number one external force…
A global survey of C-suite executives undertaken by IBM suggests that CEOs now view technology as the most important external force shaping the future of their enterprises and customers as a bigger force in driving company strategy than either company boards or their own internal strategy function.
Of the 1656 CEOs surveyed, 78 percent ranked their fellow CXOs as the most important strategic influence, 55 percent customers, 53 percent their board and 44 percent their corporate strategy function.
Technology’s importance in the eyes of CEOs has risen significantly in the 10 years that IBM has been undertaking these surveys. In 2004 it was rated sixth, rose to third place in 2006 and took prime position last year. From 2004 to 2010, CEOs ranked market factors as the most important external force shaping their organisations. Other CxOs put it as one of the top three factors this year.
According to the study, members of the C-suite were united in believing that an entirely new set of dynamics is emerging. “Customers and citizens expect to be treated as individuals, which means knowing what makes each of us ‘tick’: our values, beliefs, habits and quirks. That, in turn, requires much closer collaboration between organisations and the people they serve.”
According to Ian Wong, IBM ANZ’s interactive experience lead, the new regime will place significant demands on IT systems.
“The key point to emerge is that CEOs need to share control with the customers. They need to recognise that the customer has a seat at the C-suite table. They need to build an ecosystem that is capable of supporting very complex customer interactions. They need to empower the customer to interact with the brand in the way that the customer wants to.”
IBM has undertaken the study with CEOs very two years since 2004 and with other CxOs in alternate years. This year it combined the two, surveying more than 4000 CxOs from 70 countries; 1656 were CIOs and 884 CEOs.
Wong said that the decision had been taken to combine the two because in the new customer-driven regime, C-suite teamwork was becoming more important. “The customer really runs the organisation right now as more and more organisations become customer facing and it is the interaction of the C-suite that drives business value as opposed to any individual member of the C-suite.
“We see the CIO and the CMO becoming an increasingly important duo. The CMO and the CIO need to work in unison for the CEO to really drive the customer experience that the CEO needs to get competitive advantage.”
He added: “We found that organisations that have all members of the C-suite working together were 28 percent more successful than those that did not have a lot of collaboration.”
CIOs foresee a major shift in IT’s priorities and their own roles over the next few years, as they reposition IT from service provider to critical strategic enabler.
“They anticipate spending much more time on activities that have traditionally fallen within the CMO’s sphere, such as customer experience management and new business development,” the report said.
“To do that, more than four-fifths of CIOs intend to focus IT on two key initiatives: using analytics to create deep insights from structured and unstructured data; and implementing leading-edge technologies, processes and tools in the front office to better understand and sync with customers.”
Their plans include investing in new mobility and business analytics solutions, but they recognise that extracting meaningful, actionable insights from the information collected will be very difficult, unless they first build a more robust information architecture to take advantage of the opportunities presented by big data.”
With customers now empowered by social media CxOs see collaboration with customers as a key priority. “Outperforming enterprises are 54 percent more likely than underperforming enterprises to collaborate extensively with their customers, the report said.
“In fact, deep collaboration is a universal ambition: nine out of ten CxOs foresee doing so in the near future.”
