| | DECEMBER 20158CIOReviewThe Future of IT Belongs to the CustomerBy Warren Neuburger, CIO/EVP, PGiIf there's one truth, I've experienced working in technology, it's that IT has to have the ability to constantly reinvent itself. The most common perception of IT as the people in the back room that make all the invisible systems work, fixing your laptop or resetting your password, is ultimately not enough. The traditional industry focus of IT has been on reducing costs and improving operational efficiency, but there's so much more value to be unlocked by technology.Without the ability to reinvent itself, IT will remain little more than a cost center rather than providing true, strategic value to the business.As a CIO, I like to think of my department in terms of customer experience. "Customer" in this case having two meanings: our internal employees that we serve and support,but also the company's external customers and how our back-end technologies can provide better experiences for them in terms of support, billing, etc.Technology is at the heart of nearly all of our experiences at work today, and as such IT plays a crucial role in enabling and maintaining those experiences. And the importance of that role extends to both internal and external constituents.Supporting our external customers"Improving the customer experience requires technology change, and that's why it is your problem." - Kyle McNabb, Forrester ResearchToday's customer experience no longer consists of just one or two touch points. It is instead an end-to-end journey, almost all of which is dominated by technology. From your website to your support structure to your billing systems, technology will come to define your customers' interactions with your brand. Every phase of the journey is important, and, if mishandled, potentially damaging to your company and its reputation among its most important critics.Because of technology's critical role in customer experience, today's CIO is as responsible for CX as the CEO, or CMO, or anyone else who has traditionally owned it in the past. If you truly want to deliver business value, broaden your focus from just systems to include external customers and their experiences interacting with your brand. We get so caught up in the latest software and infrastructure that it can be easy to forget that the real importance of adopting anything new should be measured in gains to the customer.Whenever you're developing new products or evaluating new systems, it's important to keep the entirety of the customer journey in mind. Are the changes you're making enabling easier communications with customers, faster service and software deployment, better customer care or more accurate billing? While cost-cutting and efficiency initiatives are important to the health of the business, these customer-first issues are ultimately the questions that should be framing IT's decision-making in today's business environment. By starting with the needs of the customer, CIOs can drive tangible business value and growth, rather than just "keeping the lights on."Partnering with internal customersFrom an internal perspective, it has always been IT's responsibility Warren NeuburgerIN MY OPINION
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