Make Sure You Have a Strategy before Asking Whether You Need a CDO

Before recruiting high level staff to drive digital transformation, it is worth remembering that staff alone—regardless of their skills—are not a guarantee of success. Digitization is an enabler for business transformation. Business transformation requires a solid strategy roadmap backed by C-suite executives.

Late last year, Strategy+Business published an article that asked whether utilities need a chief digital officer (CDO). It discussed how the industry is undergoing a rapid transition that is underpinned by the digitization of previously analogue processes. The value of a utility’s enterprise data is soaring. Data is central to the energy transition. All the new business models currently being discussed—such as smart EV charging, automated demand response, advanced distribution management, and many more—rely on connected devices spitting out ever-increasing volumes of data. Data is also central to the efforts to improve the efficiency of business processes across the entire value chain. The old maxim "you can’t manage what you can’t monitor" still rings true.

Are CIOs Poorly Suited for Digital Innovation?

Strategy+Business correctly discussed how the traditional CIO role is unsuited to adopt the mantle of a CDO. CIOs have historically been in charge of large-scale IT deployments and an organization’s digital transformation can often be, somewhat naively, regarded as a simple extension to a CIO’s current job description. However, digitization is far from a standard IT project.

Digitization is the fundamental enabler of strategic change. It dramatically changes a utility’s go-to-market and relies on the convergence of business units with IT. Unfortunately, CIOs can be too heavily invested in the old ways of doing things. In my experience, a CIO’s intransigence is one of the most often cited barriers to analytics and digitization projects. The article states, "The reality is that leading digitization will require an executive—regardless of the title he or she holds—with skills and roles that depart from those of the CIO." It goes on to list a bunch of skills that set a CDO apart from CIOs.

Job Descriptions Are All Well and Good; Just Don’t Forget the Underlying Strategy

While there is no arguing with the piece’s sentiment, I believe that the article missed the most fundamental requirement: the need for an enterprisewide analytics strategy. I am not alone in writing extensively on the gaping chasm between the executive board’s proclamations regarding a digitization strategy, and what is being done on the shop floor to effect the digital transformation. Teradata’s David Socha’s blog from 2017 is another great resource.

A CDO is a pivotal role within a company’s digitization, bringing skills—Strategy+Business lists skills including strategic thought, experience of transformation, execution, and experience with data—that many CIOs will lack. However, these will come to naught if there is no CEO-backed, companywide strategy that drives the digitization project. Who leads the digital transformation is a side issue. No one will lead it if they lack the ammunition to effect change.

Enterprisewide Strategy Must Define a Utility’s Digitization

Utilities first and foremost need a plan to guide themselves through the digital transformation. Digitization is just an enabler for wider strategic objectives. Therefore, utility executives must identify the products and services they could (not should or will) deliver in the future. They must then identify what technologies will be required to support these services, how these services will evolve over time, and the changing requirements in underlying technology.

These strategic goals will help define the roadmap that a CDO—or anyone else, for that matter—will implement. Simply recruiting someone with an impressive CV backed up with vague pronouncements from on high will take a company exactly nowhere.