Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 30 | Page 39

A special digital projects team This type of model is ideal for organisations just starting their Digital Transformation journey. This entails creating a stand-alone team that will be tasked with collecting information from various departments and geographies. The team will need to facilitate communication and ensure representation from both business and IT. The aim of this team is to ‘jump start’ innovation, and this might be accomplished by engaging in hackathons and ideation. IT and business will have to contribute equally in terms of expertise and commitment to drive digital literacy across the organisation. An office of innovation and transformation In this model, a central group will provide the governance associated with the DX goals of the organisation. Members will work www.intelligentcio.com “ ORGANISATIONS CAN START BY ESTABLISHING A DIGITAL BUSINESS UNIT AND EVOLVING INTO AN EMBEDDED DIGITAL BUSINESS. with different departments to identify what functions can be transformed and identify use cases accordingly. IT will engage with CIO OPINION the business to ensure IT performance and provide support for program management and vendor or partner assessment. Embedded digital business This model also requires establishing a task- specific group, which will be responsible for the overall digital strategy of the organisation. The group will act as an overseer of progress and performance. An embedded digital business model will give a greater sense of ownership to different departments. IT will play a critical role in terms of enabling the digital ecosystem and establishing integration and data strategies. Organisations can start by establishing a digital business unit and evolving into an embedded digital business. This will also require an overall cultural shift within the organisation, and IT will need to be more agile, customer-centric and collaborative. n INTELLIGENTCIO 39 39