The Financial Times, in partnership with HP, recently held an event in Helsinki to discuss new CIO strategies for the digital age. Topics discussed included customer engagement, consistent delivery of service across all channels, how to deal with unstructured data, and security concerns in an era of BYOD and cloud services. This white paper highlights key discussion points from the event.

1. SUMMARY REPORT
10 April 2014
Hotel Kämp
Helsinki
THE CONVERGENCE OF DIGITAL
AND THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
NEW CIO STRATEGIES FOR THE
DIGITAL AGE

2. Agenda
18:00 Guest arrival and welcome refreshments
18:15 Welcome remarks
Maija Palmer, Social Media Correspondent, Financial Times
18:20 Guest introductions and first course is served
18:30 Discussion begins: New CIO Strategies for the Digital Age
Themes to be addressed:
• Which developments have had the biggest impact on your organisation over the last year?
• Technology dictates the ways in which customers can interact with the business, but does
your IT department engage with customers?
• As customers become increasingly tech-savvy and demanding, are you delivering a
consistent service across all channels? What challenges do you face when dealing with
unstructured data?
• Faced with the rising number of employees using their own devices and greater use of cloud
services for applications and data storage, which security risks concern you the most, and
how can they be managed?
• What strategies do you have in place to drive innovation and support business growth? And
do you have sufficient budget to achieve this?
• To what extent does the IT department collaborate with other parts of the company in order
to achieve strategic objectives?
• Looking ahead, what key challenges do you foresee in the future?
19:50 Concluding remarks
Maija Palmer, Social Media Correspondent, Financial Times
THE CONVERGENCE OF DIGITAL AND
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

3. Summary Report
By Maija Palmer
The Chief Information Officers of some of Finland’s largest companies are annoyed by the
suggestion that their role may be becoming obsolete.
“Typical Gartner hype,”said one, dismissively, referring to a 2012 paper by the technology
research company which suggested that by 2017 the Chief Marketing Officer of a company is
likely to have a bigger IT budget than the CIO. Few of these chiefs are prepared to hand over
control of their domain to others.
“I would be ashamed if our company had to hire a Chief Digital Officer,”said another CIO, in
response to the recent trend for companies to hire a more digitally focused technology chief. “The
new digital technologies that are coming in are part of business as usual; we have to handle them
just as we would anything else.”
But there is a growing feeling that a new type of CIO is needed for the new digital world - one
that is able to communicate better.Almost all the CIOs gathered at the Financial Times and HP
roundtable dinner agreed that there was a rift between the IT department and the rest of the
business which needed to be mended.
“We are often bad at selling ourselves,”admitted one senior IT professional attending the New CIO
Strategies for the Digital Age event.The CIOs all agreed that they would like more say in the top
level decision-making at the company, to be involved at an earlier planning stage, and to be seen
as idea-generators rather than simply the“boiler-room boys”who keep the servers running.
CIOs are trying different strategies to give their teams more visibility. One of them hired a non-
technical, business development specialist for his technology team, specifically to act as a kind of
“translator”between the technologists and the sales and marketing team.A year on, it is working
well, he said.
Others like the idea of getting their technical staff to spend time circulating in different
departments in order to gain a better understanding of business needs and to make contacts
across the business.
A really good CIO would have an overview not only of all the technology that is in use in the
company but also of how it is being used by the different teams, so that they could advise on best
practice and make sure that any innovations and shortcuts discovered by one team could be
passed on to others in the company.

4. THE CONVERGENCE OF DIGITAL AND
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Sometimes there is frustration, however, that IT is still shoehorned to fit around the way a
business currently works. Many feel their businesses would benefit from looking at the new
technology that has become available and radically changing business practices to take
advantage of these. Some are worried that their companies will be overtaken by smaller, nipper
start-ups which have no legacy systems to maintain.
There are some big differences in attitude between the CIOs in areas like media, banking and retail
and the more heavy industry sectors, such as mining and manufacturing. In the industrial sectors
the digital age and the era of‘Bring Your Own Device”still feel theoretical.“Why should every
employee be allowed to choose their own IT equipment?” asks one CIO.“You don’t choose the
company credit card provider or the corporate travel agent.”
Their peers in banking and retail smile weakly.They are further down this road, their businesses
have already been shaken up digitalisation and they are resigned to supporting a mobile
workforce across multiple types of devices.
“You can’t stop it, it is going to happen anyway, so you might as well make sure you can control it,”
is their pragmatic view.
But even those in the traditional industries are starting to watch new developments - from 3D
printing to robotics and the Internet of Things - closely.Their daily routine may still be one of
cutting costs and keeping the IT infrastructure running.They are not talking much - yet - of new
marketing projects and ventures. But they are starting to look.
“I have seen a lot of industries - media, music, banking - surprised by new technologies,”says one
of the heavy industry CIOs.“I am determined not to let that happen to us.”

5. BIOGRAPHIES
CHAIR
Maija Palmer
Social Media Correspondent
Financial Times
Maija Palmer was appointed Social Media Correspondent in May
2013. Prior to this role, she worked on the Business Life section of
the Financial Times. She was Technology Correspondent from May
2011, writing about technology and media, and joined the FT in
1999 as IT Correspondent.
Before joining the FT, Ms Palmer worked at Law Business Research, as an assistant
editor of the Global Competition Review, a magazine about competition and antitrust
law. She has a degree in Communications from Goldsmiths College, University of
London, and an MA in International Relations and Diplomacy from the School of
Oriental and African Studies. In November 2005, Ms Palmer was named Techmark
Journalist of the Year by the London Stock Exchange’s Techmark segment for
innovative technology companies.

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7. THE CONVERGENCE OF DIGITAL AND THE
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
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we care, and we stand by them – aspiring to deliver the best client experience in
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