C-Suite Expands to CDO, CDIO; Stakeholder Engagement Should Too

By Prosenjit Sengupta, Group CDIO, ITC

The scope of the role of the CIO, CDO, CDIO (digital CXOs) has widened over the years. Relegated to the sideline, from just being the manager of the back-end infrastructure, to entering the world of application management, further graduating to anchoring the compliance and security functions to now, when they are becoming a part of the senior management. 

Digital CXOs have now entered the metaverse of digital transformation, creating new lines of businesses. Thus the role has metamorphosed itself from being a bare metal IT to that of a strategic thinker. 

CIO universe broadening, ENTER stakeholder management

As the boundary of the CIO’s role expanded, requiring collaboration from other functions in the organisation, it necessitated wider stakeholder management than in the past. It was no longer only about enabling the uptime of the system, but also to discuss how the processes that the businesses are working on can be fine tuned. The challenges faced, and ways to alleviate them using technology. 

The IT community thus should engage with personnel from different business hierarchies, in the process also sharpening and fine tuning their soft skills. A methodical dialogue and sometimes casual chats should be initiated across functions from the internal stakeholder group – Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, including Logistics and Procurement, Manufacturing, and people on the shop floor. Besides including corporate functions like Finance, HR, Sustainability, etc. 

At the same time, at the other end of the spectrum, are the external stakeholders. The customers, dealers, distributors, transporters, etc, with whom the digital CXOs should always keep their communication channels open. The e-commerce line of business at companies have their own share of stakeholder value chain. It includes end-customer stakeholder analysis and engagement. 

Scenarios

A case in point can be Air Condition (AC) manufacturing. Consider the scenario of an FMCG company selling ACs (both personal and commercial). Apart from selling them, the company also wants to monetise the associated services and the uptime maintenance. This requires technology, in the form of sensors/IoT devices, within the product that is going to measure the ambient temperature, the temperature, the working parameters of the AC, like the motor blade, the rotation speed, current, multiple other factors necessary for the AC to be performing as per the set parameters. 

In that case the CIO, CDO will have to engage with the R&D team, to discuss building the sensors into the entire product design itself. Next in line will be the manufacturing and the supply chain teams for sourcing the devices, sensors, etc, while parallelly holding comprehensive discussions with the sales team and the service team. 

The sales team will then conceptualise and devise a compelling service business proposition to be sold along with the product. Moreover, the CXO has to partner with the branding team to ensure the new products, services are properly marketed, for it to be seamlessly monetized into a business flow.

CDIO joining the C-Suite a big advantage, but challenges still prevail

The culture of stakeholder engagement has to come from the top, making it convincing for the various business functions to engage with each other. The Chief Digital Officer and the Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO) now have been included in the top management thus resulting in more decisive and sustainable stakeholder discussions. 

However, there are certain challenges in conducting cross functional dialogues. Stakeholder engagement is more of a soft skill than a hard skill. Invariably, the biggest hurdle in the IT community is that it is unable to converse with the businesses in the language they understand. The communication of IT managers is dotted with technical jargons, unable to explain what something would mean for the business. 

The second level of inefficiency is that technical changes are done without any adequate business rationale. They are purely done for technical reasons. So it’s imperative to have a business case for any change in IT configuration, with positive results for the relevant stakeholder. These essentials are currently not very well articulated among the business and IT teams, which leaves a big blind spot. It ultimately leads to other kinds of inefficiencies - time escalations, cost escalations, value left unrealised, even to the extent of the failure of the project. 

Challenges: How can they be overcome?

The concerned employees in the technology function, coordinating with the stakeholders, should understand how the confluence between the business and technology happens, thus being able to decipher the business aspect. They need to learn and adopt the business language while interacting with various stakeholders; about finance, what are the various aspects that impact the cost and the revenue of the company. 

Being transparent in one’s conduct is the most important trait while engaging with stakeholders. From personal experience, I have realised, the moment problems are put forth in a transparent manner, people rally behind, to solve the problem. Hiding problems is not the solution. Showing lack of transparency could lead to loss of trust, which is detrimental to stakeholder management.