Business ecosystems are becoming increasingly interconnected, while the expectations of employees and customers are rising year after year. As a CIO, you’re in the eye of the storm. You’re expected to deliver top-performing services—not only in terms of service quality but also in data security, user experience, and more. Of course, at the same time, you’re being asked to cut costs… Is it possible to reconcile these conflicting priorities? Find out in this post.
Digitalization = a surge in spending?
Many CIOs still view the phenomenon of digitization of business processes with a skeptical eye. Indeed, if digitization is mishandled, it can undermine the policies put in place by the IT department. How can a company effectively manage its data management policy if business units are constantly installing a wide variety of applications? How can a company standardize its IT infrastructure if departments use different software for the same purposes?
From this perspective, digital transformation can indeed lead to increased spending across various departments. Worse still, your day-to-day operations are also affected because you spend more time managing issues related to shadow IT, trying to identify security vulnerabilities caused by the proliferation of applications, and finding ways to streamline your application portfolio, among other things… And as we all know, time is money! Of course, it’s also possible to turn things to your advantage by streamlining business processes, for example…
A Different Approach to Digitization—Yes, but How?
Your IT expertise and your cross-functional role make you perfectly qualified toview digitization as an opportunity. Your comprehensive overview of the software portfolio allows you to first identify redundant applications. You can then determine which one performs best and retain only that application (or those applications) for all departments.
Your IT expertise will also enable you to analyze the performance of the company’s core software systems (CRM, ERP, HRIS, etc.). As a result, you may realize that Application X can actually be discontinued because the CRM system has a similar feature that hasn’t been used until now. In short, think “software license decommissioning.”
In addition, don’t hesitate to raise awareness among various groups (employees, management, service providers) about the dangers of digitization without consulting the IT department: data scattered throughout the company, security breaches, increased departmental budgets, etc.
Finally, make sure digitalization and innovation go hand in hand. This is an opportunity to rethink the way we operate, take a step back, and improve our practices. But we still need to have the right solutions in place.
Can digitization really help control costs?
To go beyond “simple” application streamlining, you can bring the various business units together around a table to brainstorm about each other’s practices. Then, you can advise them and help them pool their needs in order to establish a comprehensive, cross-functional solution rather than tools specific to a particular line of business scattered here and there. In addition, use tools that are collaborative by nature instead of those that charge per user. These are the best ways to ensure the healthy evolution of your software solutions as your business experiences strong growth.
With DAMAaaS , you can build fully “custom” applications to meet the needs of as many users as possible. Thanks to our completely transparent co-creation process, you can see changes being made in real time based on our discussions. Agility taken to the extreme—that’s our motto! This allows you to keep development costs—and, subsequently, maintenance costs—to a minimum. You’ll be more autonomous and responsive to business requests while maintaining full control.
You’ll then move beyond simple cost optimization to actual cost reduction. With DAMAaaS, you’ll be able to eliminate certain unnecessary software—or software used at only 10% capacity—by replacing it with custom applications built on a single engine. And since examples speak louder than words, we invite you to contact us to discuss your needs and conduct a proof of concept (POC)!
