Dallas Community Member
EVP & CIO
Healthcare Company
Multinational healthcare service operating acute care, specialty hospitals, and other medical facilities.
Dallas Community Member
CIO
Technology Company
Leading global designer and manufacturer of electronics and components.
Ashley Pettit
SVP, Technology
State Farm Insurance
State Farm Insurance is the largest provider of auto and home insurance in the United States with 19,200 agents and 59,000 employees.
Paul Coby
CIO
Johnson Matthey
Johnson Matthey is a global leader in sustainable technologies. Its science has a global impact in areas such as low emission transport, pharmaceuticals, chemical processing and making the most efficient use of the planet’s natural resources.
June 2020
Introduction
Executing a Pandemic Plan
When COVID-19 began spreading around the world in early 2020, it unleashed an unprecedented wave of business disruption along with it. Entire cities and countries were shut down indefinitely. Businesses were forced to rethink products, processes, supply chains, and even their business models.
Evanta communities comprised of C-level executives from around the world began gathering virtually to share ideas and collaborate on responding, coping and leading their teams through the pandemic crisis. After more than 60 gatherings, four leaders are sharing takeaways for the larger CIO community on what actions they took and what they have learned.
The CIOs Response to COVID-19
CIOs representing the world’s leading global organizations met virtually over the past two months to discuss business continuity amidst the challenges of coronavirus. Their cities, organizations and industries were impacted differently, but many of their actions and the needs they had to fulfill were similar.
In these Evanta virtual gatherings, participants discussed the resilience of their organizations in managing the crisis. Three themes emerged from those discussions among CIOs.
- Successful Transitions
Most CIOs had business continuity plans in place, and while they might not have anticipated a global pandemic on the scale of COVID-19, CIOs successfully transitioned substantial numbers of people to remote work in a matter of days or weeks.
- Transparent Communications
CIOs are more involved in leadership decisions and communications than ever before – and pushing to make them transparent and effective.
- Digital Transformation
CIOs see opportunities for IT to accelerate certain initiatives and lead business continuity planning.
CIOs were a critical part of the immediate response to the pandemic. As companies moved business activities from offices to homes to help slow the spread of the virus, CIOs managed the workplace transition, implemented continuity plans, and supported remote work with technology and security. Most organizations were prepared for remote work, even if the size and scope of the situation came as a surprise.
1. Successful Transitions
By and large, CIOs reported that their organizations were prepared for disruption and capable of supporting a majority remote workforce. Many had crisis response plans in place. While those plans may not have anticipated a global pandemic on the scale of coronavirus, the plans helped IT teams respond quickly, nonetheless.
- In the immediate aftermath, IT response teams were stood up or they were quick to invoke their crisis management team and procedures.
- They had practiced some type of crisis response plan, completing drills and exercises in the past that informed their decisions and processes. Even if those plans had gaps, the CIOs had something in place to work with.
CIOs and their teams largely enabled a remote workforce without a hitch – and rapidly.
Challenges included supporting non-remote and essential workers and finding solutions for handling confidential information that remains onsite under normal circumstances.
Community Voices
We basically enacted our emergency response approach. It pays to have risk management and a business continuity plan. It’s not just about IT. You have cyber processes and technology incident processes, of course, but this is the time to make sure that as a company you have true, enterprise-wide risk management. You cannot miss any departments or any possible outcomes.
Healthcare EVP & CIO
Dallas CIO Community
Most engineers and professionals already have laptops and VPN. We had also tested our capabilities. During a tornado last fall, 4,000 people couldn’t go into the office. We learned a lot and were able to shore things up. This year, within a week, we had the equipment, peripherals and a Help Desk set up. The scale and the speed were challenging, but it came together quickly.
Technology CIO
Dallas CIO Community
We were quick to invoke our crisis management procedures. We have a lot of experience with crises because of the nature of insurance. With the broad nature of our business, we couldn’t apply a one-size-fits-all approach when executing on our plan. It was critical to be nimble to respond not only to jurisdictional and geographical nuances but to those of our internal business units as well.
Ashley Pettit
Chicago CIO Community
Yes, we had a business continuity plan. We rolled out an enhanced collaboration infrastructure in March; getting away from Skype and moving to Teams. Clearly, COVID-19 was upon us at this point, but we decided to go straight to Teams, anyway. We were pleased to do this as Microsoft Teams has given us great capability.
Paul Coby
UK CIO Community
2. Transparent Communications
CIOs are more involved in leadership decisions and communications than ever before – and pushing to make them transparent and effective.
CIOs are focused on the need for frequent and effective communications, especially internal communications, perhaps more than ever before. They believe communicating frequently – even overcommunicating, some would say – creates trust and confidence with employees during a crisis.
- CIOs advocated for communications across the business to have a consistent, cohesive message.
- They believe a high level of transparency creates trust, calm and confidence in employees.
- The speed of CIO decision making demonstrated genuine concern for employees’ wellbeing.
There is great visibility from senior leadership teams across almost all businesses right now. Many companies have daily or weekly messages from the C-suite, frequent standups and interactive town halls. CIOs explain that it’s incumbent upon the C-level leadership to demonstrate to employees that they are the top priority.
Community Voices
Leaders need to take out all the noise. Our leadership rallied around one purpose – serving patients with critical needs. I’ve been amazed at the professionalism, collaboration, and partnership. We have an extended meeting where we are honest about the business. Leaders gain the trust of employees with this honesty – and we keep a pulse on the emotions of workers on the frontline.
Healthcare EVP & CIO
Dallas CIO Community
Frequent communications and standups are business as usual – although I’ve spent more time with the CEO talking about IT operations than ever before. He gets a status update every couple of days. The company has a vision, and one of the pillars is supporting our community and being a good neighbor. We thought about how the crisis response and our communications fit with our vision.
Technology CIO
Dallas CIO Community
There was a regular cadence of communications established by the crisis team. Two days in, we combined all executive leadership meetings into one; it’s been much more efficient and provided more consistent messaging. The CEO sends daily or weekly messages, and we made quick updates to HR policies. These quick actions demonstrated to employees that they are our top priority.
Ashley Pettit
Chicago CIO Community
First, our CEO has been extremely visible. The entire leadership team was out there, being honest about what we faced. Providing executive leadership with the technology to be visible and honest is key. The board of directors was rather interested in digital strategy. It’s critical how IT supports the business in delivering its growth and in maintaining relationships with customers around the world.
Paul Coby
UK CIO Community
3. Digital Transformation
CIOs see opportunities for IT to accelerate digital initiatives and lead business continuity planning.
Despite the crisis and business disruption, CIOs see opportunities for the role of IT in their organizations and the ability to advance digital transformation.
- Many CIOs experienced the rapid adoption of new technologies during the crisis response period.
- They have embraced their ability to roll things out quickly, tighten up processes and reduce bureaucracy.
- The crisis has elevated how important a strong technology strategy is to the overall business continuity plan.
CIOs see a cultural shift in the acceptance of a large, remote workforce. They don’t see it ending with the virus and are preparing now to support a more remote workforce in the future. Employees adopted things rapidly while working from home, and now things like video conferencing and collaboration tools are the norm and not the exception.
Community Voices
This experience taught us that 80% right is good enough. Get a new technology or solution out there, and solve issues later. This has driven a whole new approach to agile; there is no more bureaucracy. It has fundamentally changed how we approach decision making. We have learned so much about speed, agility and adoption. We’ve taken a lot of superfluous projects off the table.
Healthcare EVP & CIO
Dallas CIO Community
Technology adoption acceleration is one thing I’m thankful for in this situation. People want the technology team to help them. We have seen some outgrowth of “non-standard” solutions – people asking, “Why can’t we use Zoom? Why can’t we use Slack?” We stick to a standard for the organization. But we listen and make them feel part of the solution. We will continue to look for ways to offer options.
Technology CIO
Dallas CIO Community
We increased capacity and gave associates the technical ability to work from home. Our VPN went from 13,000 to 200,000 connections across the workforce. We modified our bandwidth to ensure stability, planning for peak hours. The question now is shifting to how to “undo” what we enabled. How do we create more flexibility in the future? We are considering a permanent work-from-home rotation.
Ashley Pettit
Chicago CIO Community
No one would choose to live through a pandemic like this, but it has demonstrated how critical IT is and what we can do. It’s remarkable. We can see it in how the organization has pulled together across boundaries and continents in order to deliver and keep the business moving. In 3 weeks, we’ve had 3 years of digital acceleration.
Paul Coby
UK CIO Community
Conclusion
As organizations face significant financial impact as a result of the crisis, CIOs are preparing to deal with the next phase of business continuity. For many, that will involve stagnant or shrinking budgets, adjusting plans and timelines, and shifting priorities. Others are focused on the continuation of remote work in some form or another for the foreseeable future.
One CIO reported that at their company, the involvement of the CIO in business planning will be much earlier. CEOs and other C-suite executives are getting more IT updates than they probably ever have with up to 90% of their workforce at home. No one questions that IT is a critical part of business continuity plans.
In terms of how the CIOs rated their response plans, the consensus was that they did well overall. They identified gaps and evaluated how their solutions scaled. Overall, CIOs thought their IT teams were agile in adapting to a striking change and demonstrated their value and importance as enablers of digital transformation and of business, in general.
Special thanks to all participating companies.
by CIOs, for CIOs
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