1 n io t c Se The rise of the digital business A core set of digital technologies — mobile, social, the cloud and data, among others — are transforming companies at both an operational and a strategic level. For leading CIOs, these present a major opportunity to expand their role and remit, especially for those engaged on the most strategic elements of their role. Across a range of industries and geographies, a core set of digital example, has a dedicated button that connects users to a helpline technologies — including mobile, social, the cloud and big data — are attendant via video chat, bringing a human element back into a transforming the way companies and their customers interact. At routine support function. Pharmaceutical firm Sanofi has launched the same time, these technologies are releasing a wave of IT-led a new device that can read blood glucose levels and transfer the innovation, and creating new revenue and cost-saving data onto a smart phone to send to a health care provider. “This is opportunities. This seems like a natural process within internet an example of how technology contributes to generate new companies, which are born digital, but the digital transformation is revenues for our firm,” explains Sanofi’s CIO Bruno Ménard. now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and Of course, digital goes much further. Nestlé, the Swiss food giant, sizes to reinvent themselves. For leading CIOs, this presents a major has used digital technology to create a whole new business model opportunity to expand their role and remit, especially for those who for its Nespresso range of coffee capsules, which are largely have grasped the more strategic elements of their role. delivered direct to consumers via the internet, rather than through The wide range of examples is striking. At Nykredit, a Scandinavian traditional retail channels. Caterpillar is pushing to digitize the bank, half of the customer interactions now come via mobile trucks, graders and other heavy equipment it sells, enabling it to devices, explains CIO Lars Mathiesen, up from almost nothing just a identify proactively when vehicles require servicing or maintenance, couple of years ago. This is transforming the way the bank thinks and opening up a whole new line of service revenues for the about its customer service processes, and how such interactions business. work — opening up the potential for one-to-one video meetings These are not isolated examples. They form part of a widespread instead. Amazon, an online retailer, is using digital to invent new shift underway across the corporate world, as companies reshape ways of interacting with its customers. Its new Kindle tablet, for themselves around digital technologies. 6 | Born to be digital