November 11, 2024





Xavier Serres Escoda, CIO Danone Brazil & Digital Market Product Group Chief Americas at Danone

Xavier Serres Escoda, CIO Danone Brazil & Digital Market Product Group Chief Americas at Danone

2010, “Solely” 13 years in the past. Do you keep in mind the way you used to plan your holidays, consumed media content material, or talk with your folks? It’s relatively tough since at the moment neither Airbnb, Spotify, Netflix, nor Instagram didn’t exist, or at finest, have been at a really early stage of their profitable journey. The disruption that all of us confronted with the arrival of those tech-based companies was an actual Digital Transformation for mankind and, eventually, this arrived in all our corporations.

Digital transformation is pushed by improvements that modified the standard energy stability in most markets and likewise in our private sphere. All of a sudden, we shoppers elevated our affect and energy after we grew to become Web actors and began ranking services. Furthermore,  corporations must be able to face new opponents migrating from different markets. These days we will all innovate by taking fewer dangers (cloud computing, low-code, and so forth), accelerating, and democratizing innovation itself. Because of know-how we have now extra knowledge and, these days, knowledge is extra accessible than ever … Therefore, completely different markets and firms is perhaps pressured to rethink their worth proposition to outlive and keep aggressive.

To sum up, I might say that digital transformation isn’t about know-how however about enterprise and the best way we adapt our enterprise to social modifications pushed by know-how; Creating new company methods to achieve such a risky setting and new leaders that will digitally function our corporations.

How ought to the CIO adapt him/herself? First, we’d agree that Digital Transformation is each a problem and a chance for the CIO: the problem comes when the CIO and the whole IT division are demanded by the entire group in areas that have been historically out of our scope. The chance comes precisely in the identical path.

“Pivoting to Digital Product Administration may assist develop the prevailing IT practical roles to remodel IT departments and grow to be the Digital Transformation enabler, which all corporations are on the lookout for.”

On this new setting, we shortly learn the way our outdated methods of working will not be matching anymore with right this moment’s enterprise necessities: Now it’s simpler to innovate, however not with the classical waterfall, knowledge is extra accessible than ever however companies have no idea what they want from all these knowledge and with out correct necessities IT is misplaced. Digital Transformation is the ultimate set off for IT departments to evolve.

And after we, CIOs, embrace this actuality, is after we can materialize the chance. Strolling along with enterprise -when not leading- on the digitization journey will painting IT departments as enablers for worth creation, not any longer as a price in our P&Ls.

Therefore, we might want to give attention to worth creation and would require to be customer-centric. It’s not about IT departments having to ship necessities anymore, as an alternative, it’s about co-building a services or products to unravel an issue. It’s not about IT delivering a challenge and instantly transferring ongoing actions to a associate and transferring to a different challenge with related switch gaps inflicting a lack of expertise effectivity alternatives as an alternative, it’s about constructing a long-term product lifecycle that may generate larger engagement with its enterprise. With this in thoughts, I’d prefer to introduce the idea of Digital Product Administration as a framework to realize this new step in IT division supply.

A digital product can be one thing we’d prefer to promote to the market as a result of it provides worth to its prospects, suppliers, employers, or its inside enterprise features. It’s a price capsule that we’ll handle contemplating the product’s total lifecycle, co-owning it with the remainder of the enterprise to maximise its generated worth.

So, now that we don’t have a go-live date (as a result of we’re product-centric, not challenge), the place every thing must be prepared as a result of we’re managing the long-term, we will plan a primary partial supply to validate the speculation, get suggestions, and develop our product to a second incremental step. 

Having periodic and frequent deliveries shall be useful in various situations: generated worth will be confirmed or the roadmap may very well be adjusted, the danger is decreased for the reason that variety of modifications launched at each iteration is smaller, suggestions on methods of working will be utilized to maximise effectivity and group well-being, and eventually, buyer’s wants are extra simply fulfilled.

A key function on this transformation is the Digital Product Supervisor (Product Proprietor in some organizations). The primary goal of this function is to have a everlasting give attention to the product, and particularly, on the issue that needs to be solved. It is a hybrid function that should navigate between enterprise practical understanding and technical supply. Digital Product Supervisor should create real connections with enterprise stakeholders to seize the worth to be delivered after which work with technical roles to translate them into options. It additionally has to create sure situations that may permit the group to really feel they’re fixing an issue, not merely coding specs. 

A number of the required gentle abilities for a DPM can be Ardour for the product and its prospects; Transparency to construct real connections with stakeholders that we beforehand described; Curiosity to remain related with new market or tech traits that will enhance worth for his/her product.

A typical dialogue is the attainable allocation of all of those roles: IT? Practical enterprise areas? A selected space?

I personally envision a chance for all of us, to play the CIO function: If we consider DPM will convey worth to the corporate and our prospects, let’s begin engaged on it little by little, nonetheless, with out hesitation. Think about DPM as our product, constructing a primary model of it and evolving the idea along with enterprise, if long-term the digital product managers are transferred to different areas or a brand new space is created, It’s fantastic: the corporate shall be embracing the idea and IT shall be perceived as the important thing enabler for its transformation.

Digital Transformation is bringing a wonderful alternative for IT departments to shine and present actual worth for his or her group to evolve present enterprise fashions into others that may maximize worth for purchasers. Therefore, adapting conventional methods of working into extra collaborative and decreasing threat by way of frequent incremental deliveries. Pivoting to Digital Product Administration may assist develop the prevailing IT practical roles to remodel IT departments and grow to be the Digital Transformation enabler, which all corporations are on the lookout for.