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EMMANUEL BINARD: CIOS NEED TO MIX THE RIGHT IT COCKTAIL
‘CIOs need to mix the right IT cocktail’
CIOS ARE SPOILED FOR CHOICE WHEN IT COMES TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES. BUT WHICH ONES ARE RIGHT FOR SUPPORTING THE BUSINESS SUCCESSFULLY OR EVEN CREATING NEW BUSINESS? THAT’S WHAT EMMANUEL BINARD AND HIS TEAM IN BELGIUM AND LUXEMBOURG ARE WONDERING.
Emmanuel Binard, Regional Vice President Sales for Gartner BeLux, has been with Gartner for seven years. In his current role, he oversees sales in Belgium and Luxembourg.
Prior to that, he worked in telecoms for fourteen years, where he held various positions in strategy, sales, and marketing.
Gartner’s Be ux organization has been through these di cult times. ‘There is much to be proud of,’ says Binard. ‘Our business is based on a hybrid model. So, we can offer our services, analyses, and advice online without a problem. Over the past few years, we’ve been able to transition to virtual service delivery for those who need it rather swiftly.’
The first half of this year has even proven to be the best ever for Gartner. Binard explains, ‘That’s mainly because digital transformation is in full swing, and new roles have been created as a result, which opens up new business opportunities for us. Data architects are becoming increasingly important, while IT and business are more and more intertwined.
These are all trends that provide good prospects for us.’
CHALLENGES
On the other hand, he acknowledges that there are challenges, especially when organizing events – a significant part of Gartner’s business. ‘Growing new relationships and maintaining existing ones has really changed. eer connections are less personal, so it’s more di cult to connect people. This year, we’re launching a new tool called Braindates, designed to help people get to know each other in a virtual world. But of course, we hope that the circumstances will allow us to connect peers in person from time to time.’
EMMANUEL BINARD
‘We are also learning a lot in this area. For example, we are fully committed to ensuring that attending a conference – whether virtual or physical – is an experience that lasts longer than the event itself. For example, we are already trying to initiate interaction between participants much earlier, including deep-dive expert sessions, peer connection, and working sessions with the CIO team. These are all new things that online tools have made possible. And after the event, we will carry on with this. Our content is fully accessible online, which means we can offer our customers digital masterclasses – a session with the customer’s team and a business partner where we tackle a theme, followed by a number of deep-dive sessions. Virtual Symposium is like Ne lix for digital learning. It’s basically a great opportunity for us to present Gartner beyond our traditional contacts, including with organizations that aren’t our customers. We’ve even set up special programmes to help them.
AN EXPANDING PARTICIPANT PROFILE
The profile of those who attend Gartner events is becoming ever wider than that of the traditional CIO. ‘We are seeing more and more people involved in applying technology, including at C-level. This creates new roles and expands our C-level footprint.’
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
A report from the European Investment Bank for 1 says that a third of Belgian companies developed a new service last year as part of their investment strategy. And a fifth of those companies invested in initiatives that are truly innovative in Belgium or even on a global scale. ‘It was very gratifying to read that. Because I have to admit that, in practice, I still come across many companies without enough digital ambition. I also see large gaps between IT and business in a lot of firms. There’s still room for improvement there.’ That was revealed in a survey carried out by Gartner itself. ‘It seems that digital transformation hasn’t gone as well in the Benelux as in many other countries. lenty of pilot projects were launched quite quickly, but often that’s where it stopped. Many people who saw themselves as leaders were actually playing catch-up. There’s still a lot of work to do in implementing digital technology, training employees, and creating a digital strategy.’ In Belgium, Gartner has introduced the Digital Execution Scorecard, which makes it easy to identify the difference between digital ambition and digital reality. The tool has been used by of our customers, and they usually came to the conclusion that there are still a lot of gaps to bridge.
PUBLIC SECTOR
David uyckx is the sales manager responsible for the public sector in Belgium: ‘Remarkably, we can see that many public sector companies are able to digitalize their processes and customer contacts faster. And in the public sector too, in some cases, there is no intention of moving processes that have suddenly been shifted online back to being physical again. We can see a clear move toward the cloud
DAVID LUYCKX
and hybrid working in the public sector, which affects the amenities provided.’
APPLYING NEW TECHNOLOGIES.
As for the actual technologies used in digital transformation, AI and robotics are certainly on the up. Binard says, ‘We can see this in all departments of a company: with the CFO, in the supply chain, everywhere actually. avier Ousmane, responsible for FSI and EU, gave me an example of different banks and insurers for which AI is an essential pillar of their business strategy.’ ‘My colleague, analyst aurie Shotton, wrote a research paper entitled: The CIO has to be a good automation mixer. He says that the CIO’s work is like mixing a cocktail. You don’t make a good cocktail by simply throwing some ingredients together and shaking them... no, you have to add exactly the right amount of each ingredient at
XAVIER OUSMANE
exactly the right time. That’s a science in itself.’ This is also the case when it comes to applying new technologies. ‘It’s not just a bit of R A here and a bit of AI there. No, you need to know exactly what each component does and apply it to right degree. I found that was a nice analogy. Because I see it happening time and time again. A CIO buys a new piece of software and wants to make the most of it, so they decide to roll it out at once, rather than thinking more carefully about how it can contribute to the business and then deploying it in very focused and, above all, measured way.’ CIOs will find plenty of inspiration at this year’s IT Symposium. ‘We’ve gone through a great deal of disruption recently: politically, environmentally... not to mention the pandemic. But the ability to transfer knowledge online could help provide an answer to that disruption. No-one had dared to predict that we could make business fully digital from one day to the next. But it worked. However, it was only possible because there were people who dared to take on that seemingly impossible challenge.’
DISRUPTION
‘Deploying new technologies too rapidly can cause disruption, too. As a C-level executive, you have a choice: either keep up with developments and go along with them, or just ride out the disruption and fall behind more and more. If you’re not taking the time to make sure you stay ahead, then you really have to ask yourself why you want to be at C-level. Facing change and innovation is a vital part of a C-level executive’s work.’ ‘ ersonally, I believe that Gartner’s strategy should be fully embedded in our customers’ decisionmaking and processes. That is our vision, which is also reflected in our new corporate branding. We’re saying: Gartner delivers objective actionable insights to executives and their teams. Actionable insights means that we will guide our customers in the longer term and engage in an objective discussion about their decisions and execution throughout the journey. The digital mindset cannot be challenged on command; you need a trusted partner. Executive sound boarding is one of the most important activities we carry out here, and increasingly with both the business and at the boardroom.’
MANAGEMENT TEAM
8 – 11 November 2021 | EMEA | Virtual gartner.com/eu/symposium
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