Curiosity drove us to launch the first ever Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Barometer in November 2016 with the Finnish sparse but rapidly growing population of CDOs as our target group. We managed to reach the vast majority of the CDOs who were equally eager to hear what their peers had to say.
Our core business is improving our customers’ competitive advantage in areas of digital customer acquisition, advanced customer engagement, e-commerce, digital services and sophisticated analytics. These themes have become more and more a boardroom discussion and during the past couple of years, digitalization has become a designated management discipline with the CDO at the helm.
What is it that keeps the CDO up at night?
Our angle to the inquiry was on one hand to get a better understanding of the CDOs’ role as opposed to the CIO. And on the other hand, what is it that keeps the CDO up at night – what are the burning issues they feel they need to resolve. The response rate was excellent and the findings were interesting indeed. Finnish CDOs regard themselves as change-agents, not IT managers; their mission is to navigate their companies through extensive digital transformation. Bilot’s mission is largely identical and we felt it our obligation to align ourselves with the CDOs’ agenda. Without doubt, we are technically very savvy, but without a strong business context we don’t feel our value proposition is fully exploited.
What is the role of CDO in Poland?
As Bilot operates in an international business environment and has launched a business entity also in Poland, extending the CDO Barometer to Poland came as a natural next step. One of the reasons that we entered the Polish market in the first place was that it is growing market and about five times in size compared to Finland. On the other hand, the degree of digital maturity is still an unknown to us and also whether the role of the CDO has begun to emerge as frantically as in the Finnish market.
Once we have carried out the CDO Barometer in Poland and analyzed the data, we will arrange a similar results broadcasting event we held in Helsinki. We intend to get the CDOs together and we aspire to provide an unilateral discussion platform for peer CDOs to exchange thoughts, be inspired and learn together.
Are you one of the first Polish CDOs? Please enter your thoughts into the Barometer.
Posts about the first CDO Barometer:
