As technology gets ubiquitous and transforms industries, the roles of the enterprise technology leaders have gained enormous importance. The CTO, CIO functions are now seen as critical to the long-term strategy and success of the enterprise. This phenomenon is now mainstream irrespective of the size of the enterprise. The CIO / CTOs are now grappling with this new reality which expects them to deliver value across the dimensions of business agility, operational efficiency, security / compliance and innovation. The implications of these expectations are compounded for small / medium tech organizations which do not enjoy the luxury of a large tech budget, mature partner ecosystem and manpower to deploy across these functions.

The Key Question

If Finance has ERP, Sales has CRM, HR has HCM — what platform does the IT function have to manage and master their complex agenda?

A Day in Jane’s Life

Jane is the CIO of a $50M CPG company. Today, she has to rely on Excel spreadsheets to understand how she is doing on her quarterly budgets, get weekly tech project status on ppt via emails, tap into her own network in the hope of finding the right tech service provider for new projects and have her own to-do list to manage business risks and compliance requirements. She feels that delivering success for her business is a lot down to chance and super heroic capabilities of her and her teams. And curiously, it is reinventing the wheel each time!

The ITIL4 Lens

To understand Jane’s conundrum better, we refer to ITIL4 — a framework commonly adopted for the entire spectrum of IT governance from demand to value. Most of the products and toolsets that Jane and her team use today (if at all) are in the areas of Service Management. However, general management practices are equally if not more important and have an outsized impact on overall value delivered. Practices like Strategy Management, Relationship Management, Portfolio Management, Supplier Management, Risk Management, Service Financial Management and Knowledge Management are way too important, interconnected and complex to be managed manually or in silos.

A New Category: Tech Value Management

As we thought of building trmeric, we figured we had this broad problem space to solve. Hence, we set out to create a new category of software — something that brings together people, processes and technology all together. We call trmeric a Tech Value Management software. It is an AI platform that helps IT & Tech teams to reimagine how they plan, mobilize, deliver and realize max value from all their tech investments.

A New Way to Tech

Leveraging the 3 super-powers of GPS (Generative Process System aka AI infused workflows), Tango (genAI copilot) and Network (curated provider ecosystem), trmeric creates a “new way to Tech”. For someone like Jane and her team, this will not only be a productivity game changer but more importantly, empower them to amplify the business value they can deliver.

Sounds interesting? We look forward to having you on the journey.

Over the last 2 years I’ve had the opportunity to meet 75+ senior leaders from some of the most outstanding organizations in the world. CEOs, CFOs, CIOs & other senior leaders from a cross section of industries. Given that we live in a ‘Change Economy’ these discussions invariably hover around how these companies are transforming to new market realities… using digital technologies.

While every leader I met is focused on technology led transformation, the fact remained that their organizations were in different spots in truly leveraging the power of technology. I was intrigued by why some organizations were getting more from digital than others? Could I find the answer to this question from the nature of discussions we were having & the follow-up actions?

Digging Into the Data

My first instinct was to look for anecdotal evidence. But then I introduced the data elements, especially considering I was dealing with a topic which has so many variables and knowing fully well that despite my best efforts there would be subjectivity. Here’s what I did:

• I listed out 50 CXO interactions & the subsequent discussions / actions and rated them on the quality of the follow-up actions
• Quality of the interaction was taken to be a function of speed of action &/or scale of action
• These were cases where we had multiple discussions & hence had the opportunity of building a good understanding of these organizations’ working style
• Finally, I super-imposed the financial performance of those companies around two metrics — stock price movement & revenue growth in the last two years

The Top 4 Takeaways

The result of this analysis was revealing. Here are the top 4 takeaways:

1. How decisively companies act is not a function of their size — some of the largest companies in the world acted decisively & boldly (& vice versa)
2. ALL the companies that acted decisively were doing very well on the financial metrics. Interestingly, a surprising number of the 50 companies in the sample set did NOT belong to this ‘decisive’ category
3. 75% of the companies that took longer to make decisions were laggards in terms of financial performance. They showed low, even negative, growth of both revenues and stock price in two years
4. There were some consistent cultural traits with companies that were succeeding. Organizations were empowered (decentralized, but thorough) and hence quick. There was willingness to take bold decisions, like going with a smaller company or investing in less proven IP. These teams / companies were playing to win & not just playing safe. Finally, there were often new leaders in the mix, they wanted to make a point

The SO WHAT?

Firstly, success in digital transformation seems to be significantly correlated to culture of the organization. The Digital Winners stand out not just because they understand the power of technology better (most organizations understand the power of digital quite well), but also because their culture is more aligned to maximize the benefits of technology. Speed of decision making, cushion to fail (making bold decisions), infusion of fresh talent into the organization are critical dimensions. I am sure there are more, what is critical is to establish a few key ones.

Join the discussion, would love to get your thoughts. I am back to the drawing board!