About
The EY & CIONET forum is designed to help Digital Leaders deliver greater value to their Boards.
The year 2020 will be long remembered as the moment the digital world came to our doors, with home working and 'online' everything – from shopping and banking to education and healthcare. Since that time, boards have been pressurising IT leaders such as CIOs, CDOs and CTOs to accelerate their digital journeys.
Transformation now features at the heart of the CIO agenda and covers an ever-growing range of factors such as human-centricity; technology deployment at speed; and innovation at scale.
Why a business transformation forum for CIOs?
In this new digital era, IT plays a central role in driving value for all stakeholders e.g., investors, employees and customers. As never before, investment in technology must deliver measurable business benefits. Over the next five years, IT will become ever more critical to value creation and revenue growth as we see further waves of disruptive technologies hitting the shores of the UK&I.
But only by comprehending the full business picture and partnering effectively with CEOs and members of the ‘C’ suite can the CIO community help reverse two decades of stagnant productivity and equity growth in the UK&I and contribute to a prosperous ‘Digital Britain’ in the coming decade.
What is expected from today’s CIO?
CIOs are well positioned to be the digital leaders within their organisations. But how might they help drive value creation for all stakeholders in the next five years amidst ever growing levels of disruption?
To be an effective business partner, CIOs need to be influential in:
- Developing ‘business strategies’ for the digital economy
- Aligning IT investments with the ‘measures that matter’
- Driving ‘technology at speed’, building digital capabilities to ‘innovate at scale’
- Maintaining a ‘relentless focus’ on the customer and the entire value chain
- Modernising IT for efficiency, resiliency and agility
- Increasing flexibility for nurturing ecosystem partnerships
- Managing risk and maintaining trust amongst all stakeholders
Only by understanding the full business picture and partnering effectively with CEOs and members of the ‘C’ suite can the CIO fulfil his or her natural advantage as a digital leader.
Role of CIRCLE, the EY & CIONET forum
Combining the expertise and reach of CIONET and EY, we are launching a UK&I forum for CIOs, CTOs and IT Leaders whose intent is to work with ‘C’ suite peers to address gaps in current performance, and to help deliver measurable improvements in stakeholder value.
To partner effectively with their business peers, the CIO needs to develop a ‘T’ shaped skills base, with the vertical column representing technology and the horizontal representing business.
EY is uniquely positioned as a multi-faceted, global consulting firm that covers every aspect of business performance, from financial, through human skills to technology and digital transformation. Its recent programmes, ‘reframing the future’ and ‘transformation realised’ contain practical case studies from a wide range of leading companies worldwide.
CIONET is one of the world’s largest IT communities with 10,000 members. It holds over 500 events annually in 23 countries to share and evaluate best practice in technology deployment and IT management.
Together, EY and CIONET are combining to create a circle where Digital leaders are able to discuss their experiences of business and technology, joined by guest speakers, to equip one-another to break out of value traps and play a leading role in reinventing business for the digital era in the UK&I.
What the forum offers its members
Through quarterly round tables, EY and CIONET will address the full range of business and technology related challenges and opportunities that enable CIOs to deliver genuine transformation and innovation within their organisations and sectors. This will span people, technology and innovation.
Our programme will include:
- Perspectives from CEOs, CFOs and other CxOs on how new sources of digital value can be generated, and how this benefits all stakeholders
- Practical guidance from functional leaders such as Marketing, Sales and HR directors as to how digitisation can transform operational performance within the organisation
- Thought leaders in technology and digital business to assess where new opportunities lie, especially in areas such as AI, blockchain, IoT, space and 5G
- New operating models that enable ‘human centricity’; ‘technology at speed’; and ‘innovation at scale’ to meet the competitive challenges of the digital economy
Join us at our first event on 30th September
To launch an impactful business transformation forum for CIOs over the coming years, we invite you to join us on the 30th September to share your own experiences of business transformation programmes and to co-create a set of relevant topics for future quarterly events. We will be joined by a senior CFO to share perspectives on where IT is contributing to business performance and where gaps remain.
Dana G. Hanson, Technology Consulting Leader at EY UK&I will lead with a warm introduction. Asheesh Malhotra, partner at EY UK&I, and Roger Camrass, Director of Research at CIONET will facilitate the forum and provide their own views about prospects for CIOs in the digital economy.
