A lot of businesses know that they need technology leadership, they just don’t know what that should look like.
Finding tech leaders with the right track record is difficult, attracting them to join your business is extremely competitive, and when they’re on board their remuneration package will be significant. When you’re investing so much in your leaders, you need to be sure you have the right ones.
Here are some of the skills that you need to bring into your organisation, based on the goals that the company sets.
Goal: Digital transformation
Track record
There’s no shortage of people with a digital transformation background. Those who are rarer are the leaders who have actually delivered transformation projects, on time and on budget. Whatever your sector, size, or stage of business maturity, the tangible track record of your hire is fundamental.
Focus and clarity
It’s easy to make digital transformation imprecise and hard to understand, and that’s partly why there are so many professionals in the area who don’t have a track record of delivery. Any digital transformation expert needs to be able to express simply and clearly what transformation is, what your business needs, and how they will objectively measure its success.
Leadership and stakeholder engagement
If it’s done right, digital transformation is a major change, and that means engagement across departments is fundamental. Digital transformation isn’t simply technological — a major part is cultural, so the leader of that project needs to inspire people as much as manage technology.
Goal: Better data (and customer) insight
The amount of business and customer data available is astonishing, compared to even ten years ago. A business hoping to harness that should start with two questions:
- Have we gathered all the data we need or want?
- Can we use it?
A lot of businesses have the data but don’t know what to do with it or how to make more money from it. In that case, you’re sitting on a goldmine and you’re not digging. There could be staggering improvements in efficiency, and numerous opportunities for cross-sells, upsells, and customer acquisition that you’re simply not taking advantage of.
That’s where you need the incredibly valuable combination of data literacy and commercial insight.
Goal: Improving Customer experience
If you’re trying to increase your lifetime customer value, or your retention rates, then you might be examining your customer experience. Whether that’s the user experience of a product, or your website or app, or simply customer journey and behaviour, data will tell a story, and technology will make the improvements you need.
Again, commercial awareness is at the root of the change you need, and when you combine that with empathy for the user experience and understanding of human behaviour and psychology, then you’ll see metrics like retention and average spend climb very soon.
How to find transformative tech leaders
Tech leaders may be plentiful, but those who have overseen real transformation are scarce. RPI specialises in placing the talent that has the acumen to deliver business transformation, and has the specific digital expertise(and soft skills) that your company needs.
Contact people@rpint.com to see how our executive search services could drive commercial and technological change.
