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Board of Directors

Is the digital business journey at the top of your boardroom agenda? Is the Board of Directors engaged and concerned? Are they willing to invest resources and support?

There is a great report on ‘CEO perspectives in the digital age‘ which summarizes some findings of a survey with over 400 global CEOs to discover what they really think about the digital journey and what it means to their business. It contains the links to the respective reports.

Here are some of the findings:

  • Digital business change ranks at the top of that boardroom agenda according to 39 percent of responding CEOs.
  • 34 percent says it is important but not the top priority (there are other challenges and priorities as well, depending on company, industry and so on of course), 
  • 23 percent sees digital business change as a way to support other strategic priorities.
  • A small percentage (5 percent to be precise) sees digital business journey as a way to be more efficient in their operations.

The high importance of digital business journey for the surveyed CEOs might come as a surprise if we compare with the often internal and immediate goals in many digital change projects but we need to keep in mind a few aspects of this survey on the CEO and digital transformation.

Some of the key aspects to take into account:

  1. While innovation and business model change might belong to the more mature goals of digital change all in all many companies are still in earlier stages and not yet approaching maturity.
  2. The responding CEOs are active in industries of which some are especially busy with digital business journeys. The survey spans manufacturing, energy and resources, financial services, travel, transport and logistics, retail, consumer goods, and automotive industries.
  3. The Board should understand and support the C-Suite vision and top level goals.
  4. The Board should approve funding for key initiatives. The CEO should have discretionary funds for other initiatives. The percent allocated can be set by the Board. The CEO should provide an annual report summarizing the investments and business results.