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The CIO’s moments through the surge of COVID – 19

Even though the COVID-19 epidemic is essentially a human calamity, technology has come to the forefront of the fight against this. It seems organizational strength may have faced its toughest test in history.

CIOs are currently fronting the hardest tests of their profession. Organizations are experiencing operational breakdowns, denial-of-service attacks, and as result sites are going down due to high hits. Although companies are struggling to cope with these additional unexpected challenges, it now seems clear that CIOs are playing a very pivotal and crucial role to keep the lights on in this catastrophe.

We surveyed CIOs of large enterprises globally. Based on discussions and understanding in supporting companies steer previous economic challenges, CIOs need to concentrate their efforts on the following ten major initiatives over the next three months:

Be more compassionate to your people

The first order of business for the CIO is to take care of their workforce. Recognizing that people are more concerned for their family, children, and loved ones and trying to stay safe, even while doing their best to perform their jobs, is noteworthy. So it demands CIOs to be more compassionate and gracious to the team.

Communicate Regularly with Conviction and clarity

Uncertainty leads to confusion and chaos. CIOs need to overcome that challenge by creating a crisis-communication system that is focused around making things clear to both the executives and staff about what the challenges are and the actions being taken to address them.

Make Work-from-home simple and Convenient

The abrupt transition to work-from-home has generated many challenges, ranging from insufficient web conferencing facilities to weak internet access. CIOs need to act swiftly guide and help staff with the necessary technical assistance before everyone starts choosing their own preferred tools and technologies for remote working.

Initiate and encourage to embrace new tools and technologies

When workers change their working habits, many of them face what can feel like disorientation of a variety of resources and no knowledge of how to properly utilize them. The most difficult aspect of the process is encouraging people to embrace new tools, technologies, and protocols and run through it.

Be pre-emptive on security. Proactive action on cybersecurity

Remote work poses potential risks: workers may seek to circumvent security measures and perform their job remotely, extensive use of the virtual-private-network (VPN) exacerbates security surveillance and remote work that undermine existing protective measures from these additional risks. Cyberattacks are rising to exploit uncertainty and additional vulnerability.

Focus on keeping the lights on

Significant changes in workplace practice and trends of customer-behavior brought unparalleled pressures on the resources of each organization. Internet service providers undergoing remote worker overloads. Procurement of critical infrastructure components now having much longer lead times than standard time.

Empower and embrace the change in Business processes

Spikes and load on various consumer-facing channels like contact centers, help desks, web, mobile, and consumer-facing applications have become multifold. CIOs need to improve the capacity to manage additional traffic on consumer-facing websites and applications, as well as customer service solutions through the usage of Artificial intelligence (AI) driven tools and technologies.

Keep the balance between Operational and Strategic priorities

The natural instinct in this high-stress situation is to ponder what programs to cut. Needless to say, reassessing priorities is essential. In reality, we learned from previous crises that companies that adopt a cost-cutting and holding off strategic initiatives are much worse off than those who strike a balance between operational and strategic goals.

Stay obsessed with Customers

It's possible to lose sight of clients in the obsession of keeping the lights on. During this time, and in several cases, the actions of the customer are changing dramatically and drastically to digital platforms.

Recognize and Embrace the 'new normal'

Although the economic impacts of COVID-19 are still far from obvious, it is quite clear that a return to business as ‘Normal’ does not imply the end of the crunch. COVID-19 's effect on businesses would ultimately demand that CIOs try to minimize the impact of this epidemic and find avenues to grow the business and increase ROI.
Given many things are still ‘Unknown’ to us, how businesses respond to the necessities of a new workforce and customers will probably set the path for the future of the business. However, this is the blaze of glory for all who are going to go the extra mile to balance the operational and strategic objectives and lead with example.