Chris Curran

One Simple Solution to Unite the CIO and CMO

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Why can’t CIOs and CMOs just get along? Based on my experience, there is one primary reason why their relationship is adversarial: the CIO and CMO can’t agree on who is responsible for what, so they are perpetually trampling on each other’s toes. Our 2014 Digital IQ study identified a strong CIO-CMO partnership as one of the five critical behaviors to maximizing the value from digital technology investments. The majority (70%) of top performers in our […]

Winning Over Choosey Multichannel Customers

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Guest post by Ian Kahn When you think about a multichannel consumer, you probably envision a customer who is running from store to store and bouncing from web site to web site in search of the best deal. In reality, multichannel consumers have a limited list of retailers among their favorites, according to PwC’s 2014 Global Total Retail Survey of nearly 15,000 consumers. PwC defines multichannel customers as those who purchase from at least two […]

Finding a Home for the Chief Data Science Officer

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Guest post by Anand S. Rao Where should the Chief Data Science Officer (CDSO) reside inside the enterprise? The short answer: it depends. Companies that are deadly serious about using analytics to transform their industry draw a direct line from the CDSO to the CEO. This is the ideal arrangement, but it’s rare. We predict the CDSO will rise up the ranks as businesses gain a greater appreciation for the CDSO’s power. For now, most […]

The Internet of Things Means Business

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According to a survey by the research arm of The Economist, businesses are slightly more likely to be using the Internet of Things for internal operations and processes than in external products or services. It’s important to draw a distinction between forward-facing IoT and what I call the Internet of Business Things (IoBT). The knowledge, skills and alliances it will take to instrument the business are different than outfitting consumer products with connected technology. The […]

5 Trends Spotted at Forrester’s Forum for Technology Management

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PwC had the privilege to sponsor Forrester’s Forum for Technology Management Leaders this week in Orlando and our team had a great time and learned a great deal.  We distilled our conversations into 5 trends that we think are picking up steam based on what we heard. 1. We are Nearing the Digital Moment of Truth Nigel Fenwick, one of Forrester’s principal analysts serving CIOs, described findings from their research on the state of “digital” in […]

Scaling Agile for the Enterprise

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Guest post by Tim Mattix, Mario Gouvea and Vikram Purohit With the ever-evolving software development landscape, large enterprises are increasingly “going Agile.” Agile is applicable to many scenarios; for example, Extreme Programming (XP) zeroes in on software engineering while wrapping in novel approaches to boost quality, and Scrum is the most widely adopted agile method. While both of these frameworks work well for software development teams, Agile is even suitable for less obvious initiatives, such […]

5 Behaviors of Digital Performance

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In our 2014 Digital IQ survey of almost 1,500 business and technology executives, only 20% of respondents are highly confident in their organization’s Digital IQ—a company’s acumen in understanding, valuing and weaving technology throughout the enterprise. How can a company raise its Digital IQ and harness the full power of technology to advance their business performance? Top performers—companies that reside in the top quartile for revenue growth, profitability, and innovation—point the way. We analyzed the […]

Enterprise Agile: One Size Does Not Fit All

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Guest post by Tim Mattix It’s no surprise that agile development software methods are quickly claiming ground over waterfall methods.  The linear waterfall model and its sequential design process run counter to the reality that customers often don’t know exactly what they want up-front; rather, they tend to fine-tune their requirements through ongoing two-way interactions during the life cycle of the project. On the other hand, the evolutionary development approach inherent in agile gives designers […]

The CIO’s Role in the Internet of Things

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In our soon-to-be-released Digital IQ survey of over 1,400 business and technology executives, 20% of respondents say they plan to invest in sensors. We feel confident in predicting that the Internet of Things (IoT) or the Internet of Everything will finally begin to take off this year, as futurists have forecasted for years. What remains to be seen is whether or not CIOs will win their rightful place in product design planning and the development […]

6 Signs You Need a New IT Strategy

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Guest post by Mike Pearl IT departments face crushing pressure from every direction to transform IT to meet the daunting demands of the digital age.  If you feel yourself asking questions related to IT’s role, better working relationships with Marketing, and how to capitalize on the firehose of emerging technologies, it is likely time for a new IT strategy. IT must institute massive change on multiple fronts: deepen and reshape business relationships, overhaul IT skills, […]

Digital Enterprise or Digital Front Office?

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CIO Magazine’s latest State of the CIO report tells us that only 25% of 722 CIOs surveyed think that their IT organization is positioned as true business colleagues within the rest of their organizations.  This dismal positioning is consistent with PwC’s Digital IQ findings that show that only a quarter of companies put IT at the front of business innovation, rather than hiding them in the back office to only contribute to internal improvements. This […]

Tapping into the Maker Movement

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When you hear the word innovation, what’s the first thing you think of? For me, it’s probably the Media Lab at MIT. With few constraints and an incredible collection of minds across not just information technology disciplines, but music, art, psychology and many others, they have masterminded hundreds of breakthrough inventions – everything from the first web recommendation system called Firefly to Lego Mindstorms to the $100 Laptop. But, increasingly, MIT’s Media Lab isn’t the […]