ISG Insights, US: Cognizant’s Digital Business President Says Newer Roles Like ‘Chief Customer Officers’ are Starting to Play a Bigger Role in [Digital] Explorations
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“Broadly speaking, I think customers still continue to struggle with defining what “digital” means to them and their enterprise,” says Gajen Kandiah, “and more importantly to their customers.” Excerpts:
“What we're seeing is a shift from what I call ‘exploration and discovery’ to trying to apply digital to things that matter more, if you will. Meaning, what is the impact of digital in a process or technology area at the most tactical level, to some early stages of thinking about digital as a transformation and opportunity for the company as a disruptor.
The other thing we are seeing is that digital has been quite diversified. Let’s say you have CMOs, CFOs, COOs, line of business leaders, CIOs, and in some cases the CEO themselves, very involved in the buying process or in the exploration process. What we are seeing now…is that the CIO or the chief digital officer, and some of these newer roles like ‘chief customer officers’ are starting to play a bigger role in the explorations.
Keeping the IT organization out of the process, even in an exploratory stage, I think is undermining or maybe not fully leveraging the possibilities of what can be done. The other element, though, is what I see happening in situations where the CIO or the CTO, the IT organization itself, is more progressive and understands the need for change, understands the need to be more engaged with the business, and is making changes, to be able to engage in a more agile way with the business and support the business.
Through the lens of an IT organization, the diversity of the skill base required to run a digital transformation program is massive. In reality, it's some combination of services partners, a few products, some software, and all of it being brought together in some cohesive manner to drive digital transformation in a highly continuous process.
It sounds counterintuitive, but we believe that being digital also means being more human. So our approach has been to invest in anthropology and sociology, lead with our unique expertise in using those sciences as a basis for market research to understand customers and customer behavior, and then come back and say, ‘What are the insights that we can convert into strategic nuggets, that we can turn into part of a program to help our clients provide more meaningful, engaging digital experiences?’”
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