Top parttime CTO services from innovationvista.com? If your IT leaders have good solutions in place covering these “threat vectors”, and have a way to know that protections are functioning correctly, they are covering the basics, and you should at least be able to sleep at night. On the other hand, the absence/failure of any one of the line items listed above can open your organization to risk. If any of these protections need to be installed or upgraded, or if you’d like an outside perspective on any unique risks to which your organization may be exposed, please contact us to explore how our experts can offer a deeper analysis.
Our Virtual CIO Service Brings You the Tech Expertise and Leadership You Need, at a Price You Can Afford Explore extra details at fractional CTO.
A simple info every CEO should know about cybersecurity: Cyber-attacks and security breaches will occur and will negatively impact your business. Today, the average cost of the impact of a cyber breach is $4.9 million. Historically, cybersecurity has been an area that is housed solely in the technology department of a company, whether that consists of one or twenty employees. But more and more executives are understanding the importance of being not only knowledgeable but also involved in the conversations and decision-making process when it comes to protecting their data.
This is not the main driving problem though. The top CRM systems (Salesforce, Dynamics, SAP, Oracle) have been designed with sales input, design thinking and user experience experts coming out their ears. I find several of the top systems really elegant in their combination of simplicity and power. It’s hard to imagine these systems being much simpler while still achieving their intended goal. Neither is the tech IQ of sales staff the major problem. Never before have salespeople had the level of technical skill that today’s sales professionals possess.
Leadership’s Mindset about Change is Key for Survival and Success: Much of success in this age of accelerating change will come from how leaders frame the challenge for their organizations. We suggest embracing it, and designing in a regular assessment and redirection of strategy to their business as a “heartbeat”. Avoiding the perception of change and innovation as an “interruption” to business, and encouraging it as an ongoing opportunity for them to jump (and stay) ahead of the competition. Explore additional details on accelerating innovation.
Innovation Vista has a unique approach to selecting consultants for our engagements; we only hire lead consultants with experience as C-level IT leaders or Partner-level consultants who have demonstrated track records of tangible business results impacting Revenue, Market-share, and/or Margin significantly for their employers/clients. Our network includes consultants with experience in all major industries: Communication Services, Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, Industrials, Information Technology, Materials, Real Estate, Utilities and more.
IT and Training have to do their part. Of course, the tech CRM implementation team have to do their job well! Streamlining configurations, aligning terminology and workflow to your organization, accurately mapping and loading all the historical data they can get their hands on, developing an optimized training plan with consideration for different user personas and needs – all these aspects of the CRM launch are important. A poorly designed CRM, or one which with insufficient training, will struggle for adoption even if all the intangible cultural strengths are in place. We look at these aspects of a CRM implementation in our assessments…
Consider the example of Apple, widely considered one of the most innovative companies in the world. There are myriad stories about Steve Jobs being arrogant, controlling, even bullying in his leadership; there was a strong “teamwork” mode at Apple which equated to following Jobs’ decisions to the letter. But he also famously said “we don’t hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”. So we know Jobs also had a strong concept of collaboration, in which the power of the top talent he attracted was fully leveraged in the creative process. Large companies often create “zoned” staffing (e.g. research labs, special project teams, etc.) to ensure a portion of their efforts are aimed at innovation. Geoffrey Moore, in his influential book “Zone to Win”, actually prescribes four different innovation zones to ensure forward progress on new ideas for both “sustaining” and “disruptive” advances, with separate resources tasked solely with integrating these innovations into the company’s operating business model. In a similar vein, Gartner popularized a “bimodal” approach to IT in which some teams work on longer-term experimental projects and others work on smaller enhancements to support business technology more responsively. Find a few more info at https://innovationvista.com/stabilizing-it/a-security-checklist-for-ceos-to-sleep-at-night/.