During the last years, the role of a CTO became more challenging and exhaustive than ever before. Between the pandemic, geopolitical events and economic fluctuations, businesses are struggling with doing more with less resources. The scenario lines out the important contribution of CTOs in maximizing the business value through a positive ROI of technological investments.
According to Forbes, the main technology areas a CTO should concentrate on in 2023 are: Cybersecurity, Digital Transformation, Data Management, Artificial Intelligence, global cross-functional collaborations in their organisations, and innovation (as AI, machine learning, VR become more popular). Keeping the finger on the pulse and reaching the right balance between budget and available resources could be a true adventure.
Here are 5 questions for CTOs to periodically check-up in order to make sure the technology strategy is oriented towards boosting the business ROI.
1. Are all the organisation’s stakeholders working towards a common goal?
Working towards a common goal is the key for organisations to outperform. CTOs usually have a cross-team collaboration with marketing and sales, customers and partners, technology teams, as well as the external ecosystem. In addition, they partner with other executives, including the CIO, CFO and CEO, and the members of the board to make sure their efforts are focused on the same goals and vision.
Metrics like the team attrition rate, uptime and downtime rate, team velocity, development cycle time, time-to-market, the average response time and the MTTR (Mean Time To Recover) are important to be communicated to all the involved stakeholders. By aligning them with the global KPIs and business objectives, CTOs can tailor a technology roadmap that perfectly fits the general strategy of the company. Moreover, when the collaboration between stakeholders is tight, it is much easier to identify revenue-generating opportunities that can be enabled or enhanced through technology.
2. Is the business innovating enough to stay competitive?
From new product offerings to innovative business models and improvements of the existing processes, technology can be used to differentiate a company’s product or service from their competitors.
Keeping the pace with innovation and updating the technology to the business’ needs can have a positive impact on the ROI. These actions come hand in hand with an increased time-to-market, risk mitigation (through predictive analytics and AI), market expansion opportunities, data-driven decision-making processes, enhanced team productivity and improved customer experience.
3. Does the company have a plan to address the technical debt?
Either it’s intentional or unintentional, technical debt isn’t always avoidable, but it is, for sure, a risk for business’ ROI. Having a defined plan for both scenarios could help to avoid negative outcomes and to diminish its impact.
Maintaining a tracking system of the technical debt, including it in the product backlog, making the dept transparent to the team are key elements of a strategy that would result in paying off the debt faster.
4. How to find and retain the best technical talents?
64% of IT executives define talent shortage as the main challenge in the adoption of emerging technologies, Gartner says. Finding the right tech professionals with the appropriate expertise for a company’s industry and product is definitely an essential part of boosting the ROI.
Companies can access rich pool of talents by browsing LinkedIn, collaborating with recruitment agencies, or attending tech events. But there is always a faster way to find a solution by collaborating with a software development partner. They usually have available teams of developers and engineers, expertise in various industries, and proof of successful delivered projects to rely on.
5. Is the company’s cybersecurity strategy up to date?
McKinsey 2022 data shows a 15% annual increase of costs related to cybercrime, that are expected to reach $10,7 trillion in 2025. Investments in emergent cybersecurity systems don’t directly translate into an increased ROI, but they do directly impact it, in case of cyberattacks. Protecting all the hardware, software, and data with the latest technologies, that constantly adapt and improve to answer organisations’ need, is key.
Does your technology roadmap answer to the business needs of your organisation? What are the biggest challenges that you are currently facing? Our experts in software development are always ready to support you in finding the best tech solutions for your company’s goals. Let’s get in touch.