Name: Can CIOs Enable the Next Chapter of Digital Commerce?
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Can CIOs Enable the Next Chapter of Digital Commerce?

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The pandemic has caused widespread disruption and accelerated the importance of building flexible platforms that scale. This has highlighted the need for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) rather than on-premise procurement. On-prem storage does not scale as well as cloud-based IaaS because maintenance staff and costs require bigger capital investments and limit your company’s ability to scale.&nbsp;Considering the fact that most ~90% of enterprise infrastructure is still on-prem/hybrid, one has to question why CIOs have failed to act with the urgency needed. The lack of focus on the customer and the inability to move fast is why retailers and B2B commerce companies are struggling to keep up. This is especially prevalent in companies that still consider technology a cost rather than a means of innovation.&nbsp;There are two CIO archetypes: CIOs who think they can and those who think they can’t. Some can CIOs are starting to reinvent the outdated IT organization but there’s still a long way to go. On the other hand, can’t CIOs are insufficiently aligning technology with business needs, failing to market the value of technology. If an organization's customer-facing technology is being run by a constraints-focused (can’t) CIO and not by a customer-focused (can) CIO, it will inevitably fall behind.During the AWS re:invent summit last year, Andy Jassy that only 17% of Fortune 500 companies from 1970 remain on the Fortune 500 list today, and only 50% of Fortune 500 companies from 2000 remain on the list. His point was that it’s very hard to build a business that sustains relevance for a long period of time. He then presented eight tips to help businesses reinvent the outdated IT organization and grow.Retailers and B2B commerce businesses that want to thrive in this new digital era must start checking off these boxes, namely Solve Customer Problems. The CIO must also be willing to reinvent the budget-focused, project-driven organization and shift to a customer-focused, product-driven organization. In this article, I want to shed light on broken IT systems while sharing ideas for how CIOs can remain relevant in this new era of digital commerce.Lumbergh (n.) - someone or something that blocks innovation, creativity, and reinvention like Bill Lumbergh in the movie Office SpaceDue to the emergence of cloud-based technologies and the role of the traditional CIO is becoming less relevant. In the past, you had on-prem infrastructure to host all your servers and the CIO was the person with the server farms, rubbing shoulders with Cisco and Dell. But with the advent of the and API-driven applications this is no longer necessary. Today, networking, security, and database management can be handled in a few clicks, which is why you’ll find most enterprises today using cloud computing.Yet, for many companies, IT still basically rules the organization as the CIO controls much of what the business can and can’t do. It’s not uncommon to have someone in the business come up with an idea and the first thing they hear back is IT can't do it. Every decision goes through the IT filter which is a very backward way of operating.&nbsp;To be clear, this is not entirely the CIO’s fault. The CEO is responsible for ensuring there is a clear product-driven mandate and that IT is not the blocker on customer experience decisions. Unfortunately, in most legacy organizations, there is an adversarial relationship that exists between business and IT. This is because the goals and motivation drivers for the IT org and CIO are different than they are for the business team. CEOs and boards must hold CIOs accountable for finding solutions and not becoming the department of “no”.This is what happens within large companies that have traditionally made a lot of money and have no appetite for the risk of innovating or disrupting existing business models. For example, Walmart didn't hire a CTO to help create a more product- and customer-driven business . And look at them now, to emulate Amazon, a company where everything revolves around the customer experience and the ability to make rapid changes based on market demand.When I joined Staples in 2013 we had a CIO and traditional IT organization. But we didn’t let this get in the way of innovation. The leadership team, including the CIO, was willing to change and we stood up an entire digital product organization to own the customer experience end-to-end. The CIO supported this and we joined forces to create a that included a full suite of omnichannel capabilities and a marketplace platform (). We also brought a large part of our outsourced technology for the business in house.&nbsp;Another reason retailers and B2B commerce companies are struggling is because they are very consensus-driven and rely on groupthink. Organizations that are stuck in a consensus mindset struggle to advance because they're always looking for the group to green light their game plan.&nbsp;So what happens when a CIO breaks the consensus and makes the call to adopt more scalable technology like and ? They’re essentially putting their entire job on the line. If the company makes the move and it doesn't work, the CIO is accountable. So it's a very risky proposition and understandable why many IT organizations haven’t changed. It's an anti-flywheel.&nbsp;But this is where consensus-driven thinking can be taken advantage of. If you have the CEO supporting the CIO, you can create an environment where IT organizations act solely based on what’s best for the business, which is ultimately what’s best for the customer.We are in a moment where CIOs don’t have to increase risk to push forward in innovation. Now, CIOs do not need to replatform. This is why opens the door to bite-sized innovation without tearing down the organization. Traditionally opposed IT goals are now aligned with the path forward for CIOs.&nbsp;To remain relevant and grow you must use the broadest and deepest toolsets (#7 in Jassy’s list above). However, many retailers and B2B commerce companies are using primitive commerce platforms from IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP. These platforms are incapable of creating meaningful customer experiences at scale and stifle innovation.&nbsp;I experienced issues with these platforms firsthand at Staples. When I joined, we were using the monolithic commerce platform IBM Websphere and our SKUs couldn’t be more than six digits long. I asked why and was told “because our system can't handle it.” This was unacceptable as we had our vision on scaling to support millions of SKUs.&nbsp;Similar to how we abandoned our traditional IT organization, we abandoned this legacy platform and moved to a . Back then we had to rely on custom builds and a variety of open source software like to make this happen. Fortunately, retailers and B2B commerce companies don’t have to do this today. Instead, they can leverage headless commerce platforms that offer commerce APIs and microservices for building modern buying experience at scale.You can think of Fabric as the AWS of commerce. We provide the building blocks of modern commerce experiences. I joined Fabric to help level the playing field for traditional retailers and B2B businesses after spending time buying enterprise SaaS and running a digital product organization at Staples.Fabric helps companies innovate without the fear of disaster that usually accompanies moving from traditional IT systems to a more modern tech stack. We believe replatforming is an archaic methodology because commerce platform migrations take years and tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars.&nbsp;Instead, companies today can go with a , saving millions of dollars in years wasted and IT spend. With API-first commerce services that integrate with your current architecture, you can make changes without bringing the whole system down. Some of these services include , , and .Each of these products is broken down into microservices to maximize flexibility. For instance, our OMS is broken down into cart, checkout, wishlist, subscriptions, and other microservices. Each of these microservices has an API and operates independently yet can integrate with other services such as custom apps and third party SaaS. This microservices-based approach is nothing new, but, for the first time ever, commerce microservices are offered via SaaS and make it easier for companies with traditional IT organizations to evolve.&nbsp;The key point here is that CIOs can now keep the lights on and innovate at the same time. The only question is: will CIOs make the switch? Many modern retailers already have. If you’re interested in exploring headless commerce and enabling digital commerce,LikeReplyLikeReplyLikeReplyTo view or add a comment,

The pandemic has caused widespread disruption and accelerated the importance of building flexible platforms that scale. This has highlighted the need for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) rather than on-premise procurement. On-prem storage does not scale as well as cloud-based IaaS because maintenance staff and costs require bigger capital investments and limit your company’s ability to scale.&nbsp;Considering the fact that most ~90% of enterprise infrastructure is still on-prem/hybrid, one has to question why CIOs have failed to act with the urgency needed. The lack of focus on the...

Can CIOs Enable the Next Chapter of Digital Commerce?

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