4 ways to ensure CEO support for your digital strategy

“Strategic collaboration between the CEO and the CIO makes it easier to show that digital transformation isn’t just a practice that affects only the IT function, but a new way of doing things that affects the whole business,” Ardolino says.

Roberto Puccinelli, director of the ICT Office at Italy’s National Resource Council (CNR), confirms the importance of dialogue with the board in support of digital transformation efforts.

“The ICT office follows the top-down indications of the company’s strategy, but the IT office, in turn, responds to the indications of the initiatives needed, both at the infrastructure and skills levels,” says Puccinelli, who oversees the design, implementation, and management of information systems, communication, and processing infrastructure, as well as coordination of CNR’s national network. “The dialogue with the board and with human resources is fruitful, and the managers are receptive, which greatly facilitates the digital strategy.”

Turn IT language to business language

“To a certain extent, the CIO must master the issues of all the business units”, says Daniele Bacchi, CEO of Reverse, a headhunting and recruiting firm, and a former CIO himself. “Managers speak their own language and don’t always make the effort to understand the language of IT. It’s then up to the CIO to sound less like a technical guru and more like the finance, marketing, and payroll people, making it clear that every activity takes place on the IT infrastructure. Software is invisible. We need to focus on interfaces.”

Data is one of the most important levers the CIO can use to have an effective dialogue with the CEO. Graded’s Ardolino says that when he presents a project to top management, he starts with a descriptive overview and then combines KPIs that can measure the estimated positive impact in different business areas, for example reduction in man hours or the benefits of data retrieval.

“There are issues where regulatory obligations such as compliance make it easier to communicate the need for a technology solution and get investment from the board,” says CNR’s Puccinelli. “But we also have our own internal data that objectively measures needs and results, and helps us communicate with top management.” In fact, CNR has had a data warehouse for 15 years, which gathers information from internal management systems to perform analyses and guide strategies.