Should all employees – not just IT – be driving digital investments?
Photo: Getty Images/jacoblund

Should all employees – not just IT – be driving digital investments?

A Microsoft survey finds employees looking for a greater say when it comes to new technology investments and initiatives driving digital transformation efforts.

The survey of 2,700 employees and 1,800 business decision makers (BDMs) in the U.S., UK and Japan found that while 84 percent of BDMs say digital transformation projects remain a top priority, 61 percent of employees say they are not an integral part of that process and 70 percent said organizational policies limit their ability to explore or implement digital solutions on their own.

The majority of employees agreed collaboration tools are insufficient because the data and information they need to do their jobs isn’t integrated. Many are seeking greater access to low-code/no-code tools as well as AI-powered tools to automate busywork.

Senior management appears to agree on the value of securing employee input as 84 percent of BDMs think it’s important to receive employee buy-in to guide digital transformation success.

In the study, Nicole Forsgren, a partner at Microsoft Research, advised having a process in place through which teams can push for new tools. Of one company that does this, Ms. Forsgren said, “They have an internal support structure with separate tiers — gold, silver, and so on — where workers can advocate for an expansion of tools, and also retirement of tools.”

In a column for Inc., Sarvarth Misra, CEO of contract management software firm ContractPodAi, recommends exposing every department to tech solutions and ideas, even if they’re not relevant to their day-to-day responsibilities, to accelerate digital transformation. He said, “Such exposure helps create consistent top-down messaging and branding while fostering a positive, corporate-wide, team-building environment.”

Kamales Lardi, author of “The Human Side Of Digital Business Transformation,” urges encouraging tech literacy throughout the organization. She told CIO, “A lot of times organizations like to leave tech to the CIO, but that creates multiple challenges. That means the CIO is the only one who has tech literacy, so there’s no one else in the room who can help answer questions like, ‘Are we aggressive enough? Are we right with resource allocation? Is this the best solution for what we want to achieve?’”

BrainTrust

"Some companies have a habit of investing in technologies which don’t really deliver. Some of that could be avoided by talking to those on the ground."

Neil Saunders

Managing Director, GlobalData


"The best way to drive the adoption of technology is to let stakeholders be a part of the decision-making process."

Natalie Walkley

Sr. Director, Marketing @ Optoro


"I was a CIO for a long time. I learned that employees could either make or break a project depending on their feelings about it."

Paula Rosenblum

Co-founder, RSR Research


Discussion Questions

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Should employees have more say when it comes to digital initiatives? What’s the key to getting employee input and buy-in?

Poll

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Neil Saunders
Famed Member
1 year ago

Some companies have a habit of investing in technologies which don’t really deliver. Some of that could be avoided by talking to those on the ground: asking them to identify issues that need to be solved by technology and getting them to test things before they are rolled out.

Paula Rosenblum
Noble Member
1 year ago

I was a CIO for a long time. I learned that employees could either make or break a project depending on their feelings about it. At RSR, we conducted several IT studies and discovered a majority of retailers don’t even have IT executive steering committees. That’s 20 steps backwards.

In my IT career I had more cultural failures than I did technical failures. A bug was either a bump in the road or a show stopper, depending on the attitude of the endusers.

Honestly I can’t believe this is even a question. I just can’t.

Bob Amster
Trusted Member
Reply to  Paula Rosenblum
1 year ago

Paula, it’s amusing that you mention “steering committees.” We have been advocating their creation for so long now that they were called “MIS steering committees” early on. And that was a long time ago…

Paula Rosenblum
Noble Member
Reply to  Bob Amster
1 year ago

We always had them. I ran them, which helped me, career-wise. But I also insisted on them. I had a few rules before I’d even consider a job:

  • no open offices for managers and above
  • must have executive steering committee
  • IT must not report to the CFO.

I stuck to those rules, too. I turned down a job with WorkWear (or whatever the heck its name was) because they’d gone to an open office. Left AMR for mostly the same reason.

John Lietsch
Active Member
1 year ago

One of the greatest mistakes organizations and CIOs make is assigning projects to IT simply because they involve technology. Today technology plays an important role in nearly everything a business does so digital transformations are often business transformations and require the participation and buy-in of the business. Employees are often great sources of information so organizations should encourage and solicit greater participation but continue to exercise care to avoid the dangers of today’s technology driven world, like Shadow IT.

Bob Amster
Trusted Member
1 year ago

As the lines between technical managers and operations managers fade, and technology becomes ubiquitous, more employees are exposed to and have a better understanding of what is possible and what may be necessary. Systems transformations are influenced by two important factors; the age of the existing systems and the needs of the business. We should start with the needs of the business and then determine with which new technology we replace the old. But the business should weigh heavily on what is to be implemented early on.

Dion Kenney
1 year ago

While it is unlikely that the typical employee will be more knowledgeable than the IT department regarding the engineering aspects of IT, it is very possible that they may see use cases for technology that the engineers miss. Ms. Forsgren’s approach is a reasonable way to extend the knowledge and reach of tech throughout the organization while allowing the CIO and their team to manage the application, integration, and most importantly the security and budgetary aspects of the ever-evolving tech stack.

Gary Sankary
Noble Member
1 year ago

Employees and their leadership should tell IT what capabilities and business functions they need to do, expand, or add to their work to deliver the company’s strategic goals. The IT team’s job is to find technologies that support those capabilities. Just looking for tech leads to a lot of squirrel chasing and projects that fail to deliver ROI.

Mark Self
Noble Member
1 year ago

They already do have a say — how many digital transformation initiatives have run aground on the rocks of low user buy in? Companies absolutely should include many levels of associates in not only the decision, but making sure that the projected ROI happens — and make everyone accountable for the outcome too!

From a technology vendor perspective changes like these would most likely increase the length of the sales cycle BUT also increase customer loyalty, a reasonable tradeoff from my perspective.

Allison McCabe
Active Member
1 year ago

Nothing guarantees greater success than including representatives in the user community during the selection and implementation of technology. They are, after all, the client.

David Naumann
Active Member
1 year ago

Digital initiatives should absolutely have the buy-in of employees to ensure the technology will be embraced and used. For some companies the business decisions makers, not IT, are the drivers and champions of digital initiatives, which is probably the best strategy for success.

Jeff Sward
Noble Member
1 year ago

End-users might not be able to describe the exact digital solution that they need, but they can be very clear about the problems and frustrations that need solutions. Employees are the customer here. Deliver what the customers wants and needs. And that means having a serious conversation with some very active listening.

Ananda Chakravarty
Active Member
1 year ago

This is a continuing problem, especially for cross-functional applications that have internal silo-driven barricades. Buy-in is critical at operational levels just as much as at executive levels. The best ways to build value is to socialize the concept ahead of time, generate prototypes and examples and allow a feedback process that takes action on the feedback. CIOs can get by without support, but the projects and applications soon become shelfware. Point two is to find champions to support and have them be part of a steering committee or similar, accompanied with higher level executives from different parts of the organization. A RACI is always useful to make sure business units aren’t left out.

Gene Detroyer
Noble Member
1 year ago

Here is a great cartoon which suggests how different people see the design of what is needed. I am sure we are all familiar with this.

When the design of anything is relegated to individual silos, you get the swing that doesn’t work. The most important input for IT is the need of the user. If the greatest bells and whistles are designed and never used, they are a failure. If the CEO says “this is exactly what we need” but nobody implements it, it is a failure.

IT people think differently than those on the front line, as they should. But no project, IT or otherwise, should ever be designed without significant input from those who will be executing the results.

Cathy Hotka
Trusted Member
1 year ago

Modern retail organizations MUST be jointly conceived and executed. The whole idea of “IT vs. business” is so 1995.

Natalie Walkley
1 year ago

The best way to drive the adoption of technology is to let stakeholders be a part of the decision-making process.

Melissa Minkow
Active Member
1 year ago

Innovation and change in retail *always* requires technology. Thus, in order for a team to know what they need, they need to know what the technology required for that need would be. It’s hard to motion for change when you can’t communicate how that change would occur/when you rely on a different team to make that change happen. I agree that tech literacy across organizations has to happen, especially so that innovation can occur faster and more seamlessly.

Mel Kleiman
Member
1 year ago

The polling questions say it all. In all the years I have been involved with RetailWire, this is the first time I have seen a poll where everyone agrees 100 percent. Yes, employees should be involved. They are the ones that are using the tools provided, and their input will help build better, more usable tools.

Patrick Jacobs
1 year ago

Assessing and understanding how to reduce friction for employees creates a solid footing for digital initiatives. If frontline workers can’t or won’t adopt tools for a wide range of possible reasons, there is a lot of time and resources wasted.

Employees most definitely need to have a role in tech initiatives. Those key players will be able to champion the initiative and guide their peers through bumps in the journey. Tech initiatives need to be super simple to facilitate and have in-house support that is rooted at the store level. If these steps are not solid before roll-out, long-term success is hard to come by.

Georges Mirza
Member
1 year ago

Tech projects should be driven to solve problems or initiated by innovations to help advance the way we do things. Problems and innovations are not exclusive to IT. Having the stakeholders involved and steering the project in collaboration with IT is critical to its success.