4 ways to ensure CEO support for your digital strategy

In the age of digital transformation, the CIO’s role is increasingly central to business, focused on driving growth and establishing a new digital culture across the organization.

But without the full support of the CEO, a CIO’s innovation and digital transformation agenda will only go so far. If the CEO doesn’t understand how the CIO role is evolving, or the CIO isn’t ready to make the leap to being a business leader in the C-suite, a company’s ability to innovate in a competitive and challenging environment will be damaged.

“When I joined Graded IT to drive digital transformation, management was convinced of the centrality of change,” says Gennaro Ardolino, head of digital innovation and CISO of the Neapolitan energy saving company. “The strong will of the CEO ensured innovation activities didn’t encounter any obstacles.”

Graded has been in business since the 1950s, so it’s rooted in non-digital systems, which have been modernized over time. Today, the CIO’s constant dialogue with the CEO, and IT’s recognition of its strategic role, are essential to fueling digital transformation initiatives. “Change by its very nature generates suspicion and resistance,” says Ardolino. “Even moving from a paper document to a file can be challenging. It’s important for the CEO to make his presence felt and support the new culture.”

Following are ways CIOs can help overcome disconnect in the C-suite on the evolving nature of their role in an effort to better enable support for their digital strategies.

Get to the heart of digitalization through dialogue

The CEO’s support is vital for IT executives because process change touches different parts of the business, and some department heads may not like the CIO’s guidance, seeing it as another manager interfering in their work and team.

“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.

Keep the CIO integral to budgets

According to Ardolino, it’s important to present the CEO with at least three different vendor proposals and their investment requirements, always providing comparisons and alternatives.

C-suite support for investments is essential. To help earn this, at the end of each year, Ardolino prepares his own budget forecast document, which he then reviews with the CFO and CEO.

“Together we review the items with possible cuts and additions based on the strategic line, looking at our business needs, the projects we want to push, and the timing of implementation,” he says. “The company is very clear that digitalization means not only modernizing internal processes, but opening up market opportunities, internationalization, and creating new operating models.”

The experience is similar to CNR’s, according to Puccinelli. “In terms of investments, there’s a forecast budget we prepare at the end of the year, and the requests I made for 2023 have been granted,” he says. “Top management is aware of the importance of the role of the CIO and technologies for the institution.”

Demonstrate the value of IT projects with data

The upfront cost of a project must always be calculated. “If the benefits are there and can be proven, then you can get the green light,” says Ardolino.

One example is the digitalization of attendance management, which modernizes a traditional process. For Graded’s Ardolino, the starting point was to show how the analog system was flawed and costing the company money and time. Now, with a digital system that manages and collects data on attendance, overtime, vacation, sick leave, on- or off-site staffing, and hours worked on job orders, the CEO has reliable information to make decisions. “You need to provide the CEO with dashboards where he can clearly see data that answers his questions,” he says.  

With greater freedom, the CIO should take a far more strategic and supervisory role for the organization, embraced by leadership, according to EY’s research paper, Why your CIO could be the new co-pilot of your business. Instead of simply controlling the company’s tech needs and related budget, the focus should be on security and innovation.

Speaking at the recent EY NextGen CIO 2023 online event, Giovanni Andrea Incarnato, EY’s financial service technology consulting leader for Italy, said the next-generation CIO is a triple threat: He or she must be an educator, a business orchestrator, and a master of resilience. This means the new CIO is actively involved in the company’s business strategy and people management, while introducing innovative and potentially disruptive technology solutions. It’s up to the C-suite to understand and embrace this shift to drive the next phase of growth for their organization.