As the business landscape continues to change at a rapid pace Midsize enterprises are under pressure to digitally transform to stay ahead of the curve or risk losing market share to agile startups. Many midsize enterprises are turning to Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to lead digital transformation initiatives.
There are a number of factors that CIOs must consider when developing a digital transformation strategy, including the specific needs of their business, the available resources, and the ever-changing technology landscape. With careful planning and execution, midsize enterprises can successfully navigate the digital transformation journey and emerge as leaders in their industries.
With this in mind, the following key strategies can help SMB executives drive digital transformation effectively.
Consider “out of the box” security and cyber insurance
A lack of adequate security policies, governance, and cybersecurity insurance can leave businesses vulnerable to lawsuits, resulting in irreparable reputational damage and even outright bankruptcy.
While the concept of a one-size-fits-all (“turnkey” or “out-of-the-box”) security solution might seem appealing, implementing them can be complex. It shouldn’t hinder your digital transformation journey.
Security should support, not hinder, these goals. Consider:
- Security-as-a-Service (SaaS): Outsourcing security functions to specialists frees up internal resources for core business activities.
- Zero Trust Architecture: This approach minimizes access privileges, granting permissions only when strictly necessary.
Cloud-based security tools with features like AI-powered threat detection and automated incident response can provide robust protection without the need for a large in-house team.
Traditional cyber insurance can be expensive and limited in coverage. Explore newer options like parametric insurance, which focuses on specific outcomes of an attack rather than just data breaches, potentially offering a better fit for MSEs with unique needs.
Shifting from Support to Driver
Digital transformation is about leveraging technology to fundamentally reshape how your business operates and creates value. Here’s the shift we need:
From: Technology as a support function
To: Technology as the driving force of business development
Actionable Strategies for Success:
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Collaborative Vision: Business and IT leaders must co-create a digital roadmap. This includes defining goals, KPIs, and aligning on key business processes.
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Prioritization with a SWOT Analysis: Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This data-driven approach helps prioritize initiatives and secure necessary budget increases.
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Embrace Emerging Technologies: Look beyond traditional solutions. Explore blockchain, containers, and microservices to create a more adaptable and user-friendly infrastructure.
A New Lens: Agility and Customer Centricity
While robust security (including two-factor authentication and data loss prevention) is essential, it shouldn’t be the sole driver. Focusing solely on defense can stifle innovation and agility, hindering true transformation.
MSEs should prioritize agility and customer centricity. Here’s how:
- Embrace Low-Code/No-Code Platforms: These empower non-technical staff to build custom applications quickly, accelerating innovation and streamlining internal processes.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Leverage analytics to understand customer needs and personalize experiences. Invest in tools that make data readily accessible for business leaders, not just IT.
- Cloud Migration: Cloud adoption fosters scalability and remote work capabilities, crucial for today’s dynamic environment.
Increase investment to fight ransomware and other risks
A large ransomware attack can slow down business operations until it forces the victim enterprise to stop working entirely. Reasons for this include a lack of proper backup data, an inefficient and outdated enterprise infrastructure, or a complete breakdown of the supply chain.
When this dire situation occurs, many CIOs are always thinking “why don’t business leaders think it’s worth investing an extra 10% to harden their infrastructure against such threats?” Clearly, the money is definitely spent worth it.
Deploy a central dashboard for network access
Most IT managers want to work in a single pane of glass to facilitate managing privileged access. To do this, they should deploy a portal that easily lets users in and out, and without creating too much friction, adheres to the principle of “least access” and grant employees only the necessary permissions to do their jobs. Improving network security awareness among its employees should be a priority.
Create a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy
In the modern business world, data is constantly flowing between employees and external companies. Without an effective data loss prevention strategy, it can be difficult for businesses to track and control data. Therefore, another important priority is to create a data loss prevention policy, which can help companies achieve 3 main functions: comply with relevant regulations to send, receive and store protected data; protect intellectual property and trade secrets; collect information about employees, customers and Insights into how stakeholders access and interact with enterprise data.
To achieve these goals, CIOs need to rigorously classify all data so that people can trust that people are only viewing the information they should have access to while preventing them from accessing other sensitive or business-critical data. They should classify, index, and label all data in a compliant manner.
Consider mobile device management for remote workers
Mobile device management is another key area for enabling remote workers to have a better experience on their mobile devices. The reality is that these mobile systems must be tied to a single source of truth.
Going forward, we should also expect to see greater use of blockchain, containers, and microservices at the software layer to make computing and application resources more accessible to users. These technologies are not yet fully adopted by the market, but they will become more common over time as they help companies adapt to this rapidly evolving world.
More steps toward digital transformation
To start the journey of digital transformation, CIOs of midsize companies should first conduct a SWOT analysis to identify their strengths (S), weaknesses (W), opportunities (O) and threats (T) to help the business better, to more accurately decide which problems should be addressed first.
Assuming there are 10 priorities to address, but the budget can only support 5 of them, running a SWOT analysis can also provide business leaders with visual visibility into this gap, potentially convincing them to increase their IT budget.
Clearly, technology is no longer just to support business, it is the main engine of business development. For this reason, the start of any digital transformation initiative should begin with business and IT leaders defining their projects, goals, and roadmaps for the next few years. Both parties must understand the other’s underlying business processes and agree on key performance indicators (KPIs). Then, work on turning those ideal KPIs into practical solutions in terms of technology.
All in all, this digital transformation challenge is not based on a future vision of market dynamics, which is the onerous problem everyone faces today. In this regard, any midsize business that lacks a coherent digital transformation strategy could face obsolescence.
