Premium fractional CIO services by innovationvista.com? Recent incidents should serve as sufficient motivation: UK National Health System – 16 hospitals’ systems were completely shut down by the WannaCry virus, tallying a cost of 100M in 2017. Atlanta – the city government was crippled by ransomware, disabling the city’s ability to operate or fund services in 2018. Marriott/Starwood – 500 million customer records breached in 2018, including birthdates and passport details. Capital One – 100 million customers credit card details and histories were breached in July 2019.
Our firm’s unique approach offers small- and mid-size companies the guidance and IT leadership services of expert consultants who have served in a C-level IT role in one or multiple successful tenures, and who have experience in your industry. Our consultants: Possess decades of experience with the strategic decisions needed for success in enterprise technology; Have familiarity with the business model(s) and terminology of your industry; Are armed with our proprietary Innovation framework and toolkits to Stabilize, Optimize, and Monetize your organization’s IT; Provide virtual IT leadership services to clients on a part-time/fractional retainer basis, to make this expertise accessible to any budget. Read extra info on virtual CIO services.
A thing any CEO should know about cybersecurity: Cyber liability insurance premiums are significantly increasing in cost and often do not cover all of the damages caused by a cyber breach. It is vital that CEOs establish the appropriate cybersecurity “tone at the top” for their respective organization, regarding the importance of information security and how cybersecurity is everyone’s shared responsibility in a truly digital world. Establishing an organizational “culture of cybersecurity” has proven to be one of the best defenses against cyber adversaries. It is the people, not the technology, which can either be an organization’s greatest defense, or its weakest link against a cyber-attack.
The world is becoming increasingly personalized. Frequent flier numbers and customer membership programs enable companies to track consumers’ buying patterns; social media platforms and digital marketing channels enable them to know even more about our preferences and lives. The door has been opened to inappropriate uses of this information, as evidenced by the “fake news” and Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandals from the 2016 election. But far more commonly, companies are using customer data in legitimate to personalize their communications with customers, with significant results. Customers are happy for you to know about them. According to Accenture, 83% of consumers are willing to share their data in order to enable a personalized B2C experience, and 91% say it actually impacts their buying habits. For B2B purposes, companies have long known there is easy access to public data about them, so any gain in efficiency is welcomed from suppliers who make use of that information (ideally with internal data as well – see below) to streamline the experience for their clients.
Startup companies who avoid inheriting a large installed base of “older” technology find themselves at an advantage, for a period of time at least. Some of these startups – “unicorns” – are companies that reach a $1B valuation in an incredibly short time. Many older companies will never have a chance at that kind of growth due to the weight of their legacy infrastructure, and the maturity of their competitive landscape. It requires an increasing amount of research time to stay current with technological capabilities, and that will do nothing but increase. Business leaders, already stretched to the limit by the demands of their “day jobs,” simply cannot invest the time to stay informed and up to date of all of the changes happening in the technology industry. That is where tech consultants like Innovation Vista can help, since we spend a significant portion of our time staying current in order to advise companies on how to stay current, and how to adapt their cultures to be ready for constant change. See even more details at https://innovationvista.com/leadership/it-strategy-for-a-non-it-startup/.
We target our services at midsize companies. If you’re a company of this size (< $5B in annual sales), you will not likely see engagement with senior consultants or receive quality staff assigned from one of the Big 4 or Big 3. For each engagement we seek the best consultant match based on the client’s situational needs and the consultant’s industry and leadership expertise. If this approach intrigues you, please contact us to setup an initial conversation.
Sales managers, do you micro-manage your sales teams from details in the CRM? If salespeople sense that entering all their leads and all the data points they know about every customer and deal in the CRM will bring down waves of criticism and micro-management FAR beyond what they would deal with just tracking their prospects in an old-school manual way (even including getting into trouble for not using the CRM!)… again – they will act in their own best interests. In this case, sadly, that self-interest will be completely opposite company-interest.
I find that although everyone is slammed with workload in most companies, given the chance to contribute innovative ideas, they’ll find mental energy to devote to it. Busy-ness is not the same thing as creative exhaustion. As noted above, the best way to kickoff a brainstorm is to gather initial thoughts individually anyway. Give team members time to surface ideas over a few weeks, and their subconscious mind will work on the problem. Prime the pump with some example areas for major savings or new revenue – don’t just ask them to “submit great ideas”. Of the ideas submitted, my suggestion is to identify those which have the potential to be self-funding within a year of launch, i.e. which increase revenue or save costs annually at least as large as the project costs. Most of my clients are surprised to find multiple such options which are worth exploring; technology is maturing fast, and for all its negative aspects the pandemic is also creating opportunities for significant changes in how business is done. I suggest creating cross-functional teams to collaborate on each idea, as noted above. Even if staff bandwidth is limited, each person can hopefully participate on one such project, which might involve a one-hour weekly meeting/conference call, with reasonable expectations for each member’s time investment between calls. I’ve found that even if people are busy with “normal work”, they often have creative energy and are excited to participate in something like this on the side, over lunch, etc. Explore more info on cybersecurity overview.