| |October 201819DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS NO LONGER A DREAM BUT A BARE NECESSITY IF YOU NEED TO SURVIVEProduct lines and the customer connects are getting Digital. This means that the very core of business will be digitally enabled. With Digital at the business core it is only obvious that the CIO and his team has the opportunity to get challenged and engaged. Leverage the new age cutting edge Digital possibilities and stay on top of your CEO's agenda. Also let us acknowledge that if the CIO and the IT team do not do, the business will do it themselves and this challenge of `Shadow IT' is looming large. No matter who does, the business needs it and will get done. So let's not give up this great opportunity and drive the Digital discussions and take lead role in identifying the business relevant use cases to try out the untraveled paths to business success and differentiation.Design thinking sessions with business, sharing of success stories are some of the ways which is working to partner with the business leadership and teams to discover what can be done. Keep the discussions futuristic and make the business loose its traditional outfits. Then half the work is done and the stage is set. Try making Digital Innovation teams and celebrate success. The ways are many and no specific route works for all. Break the barriers and connect as never before and win the hearts digitally. Lay those critical pillars of Digital thinking in the organization and the rest will be history.As CIOs, we also have the responsibility to challenge the solution providers to be adopt-ing open standards and talk more realistic. We should also raise the voice against unrea-sonable licensing and other gov-ernance issues. Partnerships can never be one sided and today I feel this area is pretty much neglect-ed and needs to be focused much more. Should we be driving or be driven around? The answer lies with us only and we have the mor-al responsibility to set fair stan-dards and norms in the industry where the solution providers, in-tegrators and the users co-exists peacefully and complementing each other. We also have the re-sponsibility to draw the borders for respecting data privacy and as more of regulatory compliance kicks in, embrace them and en-sure proper controls, checks and balances are set of data confiden-tiality and privacy.To summarise, the opportunity is knocking at us the CIO's and our teams like never before. Let's lead the Digital World by Innovating and co-creating the Digital Business model. This will bring great business success and take the customer delight to the next level. C IAshok Cherian
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