- Digital business change will come in the form of new assets and services that must be implemented or optimized in order to enable prioritized digital business initiatives.
- If certain IT capabilities are not in place, or existing capabilities are sub-par, then digital initiatives risk the chance of failure.
- Identify projects to improve the foundational IT capabilities necessary to support digital enablement via these assets and services.
- While IT may excel at "business-as-usual" IT operations, the CIO must leverage those skills and assets in order to truly innovate at a level that digital business initiatives demand. In other words, the CIO and their team must adopt a digital-first mindset.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
While IT may excel at ‘business-as-usual’ IT operations, the CIO must leverage those skills and assets to truly innovate at a level that digital business initiatives demand. In other words, the CIO and their team must adopt a digital-first mindset.
To do this successfully, IT must correctly roadmap the goals, technology assets, and underlying capabilities that are required to enable digital initiatives, as these are critical to the success of strategic technology plans.
Impact and Result
CIOs can leverage the skills, knowledge, and experience of a "lights-on" IT department to enable innovation.
3.1 Build a Business-Aligned IT Innovation Roadmap
Support your organization’s digital business strategy
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Analyst Perspective
Digital business needs IT’s innovation and support
Ross Armstrong Principal Research Director |
Business-led digital transformation cannot occur without the full participation of the CIO in the process of identifying business problems or opportunities and creatively ideating solutions that relieve the pain. While IT may excel at ‘business-as-usual’ IT operations, the CIO must leverage those skills and assets to truly innovate at a level that digital business initiatives demand. In other words, the CIO and their team must adopt a digital-first mindset. To do this successfully, IT must correctly roadmap the goals, technology assets, and underlying capabilities that are required to enable digital initiatives, as these are critical to the success of strategic technology plans. |
Info-Tech’s approach for aligning IT with your industry-centric digital business strategy
1.1 Visualize the “Industry” of the Future |
1.2 Assess Digital Innovation Capability & Readiness |
2.1 Zero-in on Business Objectives & Innovation Goals |
2.2 Build Your Digital Vision and Strategy |
2.3 Select and Prioritize Digital Initiatives |
3.1 Business-Aligned IT Innovation Roadmap |
3.2 Govern & Manage Digital Execution |
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Discover digital trends within industry “The Art of the Possible” |
Diagnose digital capabilities & readiness. “Build the case for the remaining journey” |
Understand business architecture and organizational context |
Outline digital vision, define digital objectives and business initiatives |
Iterate digital initiatives to prioritize and build business case |
Define the innovation goals, as well as core and enabling initiatives for IT |
Provide support to IT as needed for a successful delivery |
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Stakeholders |
CIO, IT Management |
CIO, IT Management |
CIO, Business Executives |
CIO, Business Executives |
CIO, Business Executives |
CIO, IT Management |
CIO, IT Management |
Advisory Support |
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Deliverable(s) |
Presentation: The |
Digital Innovation Capability & Readiness Assessment Report |
Business Architecture Level 3 - Heat mapped |
Digital Business Strategy |
Initiative Business Case, Digital Transformation Roadmap |
IT Innovation Roadmap |
Updated CKIP, Advisory Experiences |
You are here |
Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy

Key Concepts
Business alignment |
Digital transformation |
IT capability assessment |
IT |
Strategic objectives |
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The ability of IT to clearly demonstrate its understanding of the organization’s purpose and leverage technology resources to advance that purpose. |
The adoption of digital technologies to innovate and re-invent existing business, talent, and operating models to drive growth, business value and improved customer experience. |
A heat-mapping effort to analyze the maturity and priority of each IT capability relative to the strategic projects that they serve. |
An institutionalized process for identifying and leveraging technology in novel ways to create business efficiencies, advance business goals, and improve IT-business alignment. |
A set of standard objectives that most industry players will feature in their corporate plans. |
Executive Summary
Your challenge |
Common obstacles |
Solution |
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Info-Tech Insight
Supporting the business on its digital transformation journey is IT’s mission. To do this, IT must identify and optimize the underlying IT capabilities necessary to provide that support.
In Phase 2.2 you built your digital business strategy and identified potential digital initiatives
Stakeholder Journey maps from Phase 2.2 of Info-Tech’s approach for aligning IT with digital business strategy provided the foundational ideas for digital business initiatives. |
In Phase 2.2 you also investigated the business appetite for IT innovation, as well as any barriers to it. |
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By this point you have leveraged industry roundtables to better understand the art of the possible, exploring trends in budgeting, staffing / hiring / retention, alignment with senior leadership, IT capacity and satisfaction, critical performance areas, and creating new options out of disruption. |
Then, in Phase 2.3, you prioritized which initiatives to execute and built a digital roadmap
The proposed digital initiatives from Phase 2.2 were iterated to create a prioritized list. Next, business cases for each digital initiative were created in Phase 2.3 of Info-Tech’s approach for aligning IT with your industry-centric digital business strategy. The prioritized list, and associated business cases (example at right), should comprise the digital transformation roadmap proposed by IT and the organization’s business leaders. What follows from here is Phase 3.1, in which the CIO will determine which new or improved assets, services, and underlying IT capabilities are required to ensure that digital business initiatives are both successful and properly supported. |
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In this phase, IT will build its innovation roadmap to support the organization’s digital strategy
Phase 2.2 |
Phase 2.3 |
Step 1: | Step 2: | Step 3: | Step 4: | Step 5: |
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Identify digital business initiatives prioritized by the organization. Leverage industry roundtables where necessary. |
Understand the business case supporting each business initiative to validate the business initiative roadmap. |
Leverage IT competencies to improve upon ‘business as usual’. Identify new and/or transformed digital business capabilities that need to be supported by IT. |
Identify new or improved IT capabilities required to support these digital business capabilities. |
Brainstorm and prioritize projects for improving or supporting IT capabilities. |
Calculate changes to IT resource demand. Develop project metrics and estimate budget needs. Create project profiles. |
Consolidate projects into initiatives. Build project timeline. |
Step 1: What business capabilities should IT be supporting?
Tasks:
- Verify current state of IT innovation maturity and identify target level state.
- Evolve an innovation mindset.
- Identify new and/or transformed digital business capabilities that need to be supported by IT.
Input | Output |
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Identify your current and target state of IT maturity
To pursue innovation that supports digital initiatives, IT must first have foundational processes and services already in place as an evolved trusted operator, at a minimum.
Need more information? Consult with the following resources:
- IT Management and Governance Framework
- Road to Innovation Through the Valley of Stabilization
- Improve Incident and Problem Management
- Optimize Systems Management to Improve IT Resiliency and Proactivity
Answer these questions to determine implications for innovation efforts
Target: Does a misalignment exist between the CIO's and CEO’s perceptions of IT’s innovation mandate? Find out.
Today: IT must understand and support the business at minimum and be able to expand or transform the business as needed.
Caveat: If IT is currently in Firefighter or Unstable mode, the CIO has greater concerns than innovation. Building an innovation engine while struggling to get the basics right is akin to building a house on sand.
Tackle IT limitations head-on
Further align IT with the business expectations of innovation by learning from past successes in order to address future obstacles.
Begin with communicating to IT the current appetite for innovation in technology, why the business wants to innovate, and whether the business should adopt these technologies in the next three to five years. Projects or initiatives that drive technology innovation must always be an explicit category in strategic planning. |
Despite a strong business appetite for IT innovation, there may be hidden IT barriers that are not readily visible. Refer to these barriers and ensure they are appropriately communicated to the CEO. Failure to do so could result in CEO expectations that are misaligned with the reality of IT’s current limitations. |
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Communicate these insights...
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...But beware of the following
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How to build on ‘business as usual'
An IT shop that excels at ‘lights-on’ operations already contains the ingredients necessary for innovation.
Innovation is not a thing you have – it is a thing you do. Innovation begins when you find, and then define, a problem. Once IT starts digging into the pain caused by a particular problem, the opportunities to innovate are endless.
To bring forward existing IT skills, expertise, and knowledge into the realm of digital business initiatives, the CIO must instill a culture that both facilitates and fosters a spirit of curiosity (for uncovering problems) combined with creativity (to relieve the pain caused by the problem). Encourage IT to explore both known and unknown business problems/pains:
Digital business initiative – example 1 |
Digital business initiative – example 2 |
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A shipping company was having difficulty measuring safety metrics on their vessels.
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A craft brewery was having difficulty managing supply and ensuring customers had sufficient inventory.
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Evolve from the ‘business as usual’ (BAU) mindset
CIOs must create and nurture an environment where it's safe to pursue out-of-the-box ideas.
The characteristics that make IT an effective provider of stable services (i.e. adherence to standards, process orientation, tech savviness) can also discourage innovation. Great ideas might be generated, but they will amount to nothing if fear and doubt prevent positive action.
- “We can’t afford to take risks”
- “Management will never approve this idea”
- “Failure is costly”
- “If I fail, my job might be in jeopardy”
- “This idea doesn’t comply with our standards”
NOTE: Improving IT's culture should be a top CIO priority. No amount of preparation, planning, or investment in digital initiatives can overcome an incorrect team mindset that inhibits innovation and growth. See Fix Your IT Culture to get started.
Do not ask or encourage IT staff to innovate without providing an outlet for new ideas. Set aside time for facilitated ideation, encourage risk taking, set up a pipeline and reservoir for innovative ideas, and approve prototypes based on the potential benefit of implementing the solution, not the risk or cost.
Case study, part I
INDUSTRY: Supply Chain / Logistics
SOURCE: Info-Tech Research Group
Nesbitt Shipping
The CEO of Nesbitt Shipping, a $10 million freight carrier operating in North America, has tasked IT with enabling and supporting a major digital business initiative centered around more effective management of its fleet of 25 semi-trailer trucks to improve efficiency and safety.
Fleet optimization initiative
Specifically, the CIO must find and leverage digital technologies to improve fleet efficiency and safety. Once the technologies have been identified, IT must work backward to bolster the IT capabilities that will underpin any new innovations. In other words, the IT leader must build their own “digital garage” in order to enable innovation at the company.
Next steps
Nesbitt Shipping’s IT leadership understands that numerous solutions will be required to help achieve the digital initiative’s goals. Before vetting any front- or back-end solutions, the CIO first assessed IT’s core capabilities using Info-Tech’s IT Management & Governance Framework diagnostic.
Shift from BAU to MVP
CIOs can deploy quick-win tactics relatively easily to increase the intensity and frequency of IT innovation and a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Identify which new digital business capabilities need to be supported by IT
The capability map shown here has already been customized according to the CIO of Nesbitt Shipping and the needs of their organization.
Review your own industry’s capability map and identify where IT already supports digital business capabilities. Assign levels to high-priority areas according to the legend below.
In Nesbitt’s case, it was discovered that Enterprise Data Management is the most broadly supported capability, which is a strength that IT can leverage for future digital initiatives.
It was discovered that while Fleet Management and Operational Maintenance are supported, the solutions in place may not be sufficient for newly-prioritized digital business initiatives, and relatively few alternatives exist in the marketplace.
As for Real-Time Tracking and Reporting and Workload Planning, Nesbitt’s CIO has their work cut out for them, since these capabilities are only supported by outdated legacy applications and must be replaced.
Step 2: What new IT capabilities are needed?
Tasks:
- Conduct a value-to-difficulty analysis.
- Identify which new or improved IT capabilities are required to support digital business initiatives.
Input | Output |
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Materials | Participants |
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Refer to your IT capability heat map
By this stage, the CIO should now have a full view of:
Before moving forward, it is imperative to ensure that the IT capabilities required for digital business initiatives are robust enough to underpin and uphold mission-critical objectives. By using Info-Tech’s IT Management & Governance Framework and associated diagnostic tool, you can heat map which foundational IT processes or capabilities need maturation or additional resourcing. Any fixes required are sub-projects of their corresponding digital business and IT initiatives. |
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Conduct Info-Tech’s IT Management & Governance Diagnostic by visiting our website.
Conduct a value-to-difficulty analysis of newly-required IT capabilities
Business demand for new technology creates added pressure to innovate. If IT is not viewed as a source of innovation, its perceived value will decrease, shadow IT may grow, or any number of serious problems. Strong foundational knowledge on business and technology trends will result in identifying specific use cases that could offer your organization a competitive edge. In our case study, Nesbitt’s CIO has done the following:
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Visit Info-Tech’s Kick-Start IT-led Business Innovation to learn more about innovating in IT.
Identify and document IT capabilities needed for new assets and services
Note: Goals, capabilities, and projects will most likely have a many-to-many relationship at this stage. Ensure your alignment activity provides clarity and insight into why and how you chose the IT capability improvement projects that you did for your strategy. |
Create or improve: Business capabilities IT capabilities Capabilities are what a business does to enable value creation, rather than how. IT initiatives are projects with a definitive start and end date, and they enhance, create, maintain, or remove business capabilities. |
Case Study, Part II
INDUSTRY: Supply Chain / Logistics
SOURCE: Info-Tech Research Group
Nesbitt Shipping
Project “Digital Garage”
The CIO of Nesbitt decided to investigate what larger, publicly-traded fleet companies were doing to make their trucks more efficient, and attended an industry roundtable. The CIO found that there are several factors catalyzing large changes in the shipping industry, including:
- ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) concerns
- Dramatic upward shift in the costs of fuel, parts, and labor
- Severe driver shortages causing excess burden on current fleets
IT-Business Alignment
The CIO determined that the following goals would form the centerpiece of Nesbitt’s fleet optimization initiative:
- Reduce overall emissions.
- Maximize fuel efficiency to lower costs.
- Instantly report performance degradation.
These goals were confirmed in the results of Nesbitt’s CEO-CIO Alignment Program. Both parties agreed that fleet efficiency begins and ends with individual truck/operator pairings.
Step 3: Which projects are required for new IT capabilities?
Tasks:
- Brainstorm projects for improving or creating IT capabilities
- Refer to your IT Management & Governance Diagnostic results for further insights
Input | Output |
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Materials | Participants |
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Brainstorm projects that will improve core IT capabilities
Determine which core IT capabilities or processes are required to successfully execute on new assets and services that were identified earlier. Use the framework below to rationalize your decisions.
Step 4: What IT resources and budget will you need?
Tasks:
- Calculate changes to IT resource demand.
- Develop project metrics and estimate budget needs.
- Create detailed project profiles.
Input | Output |
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Materials | Participants |
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Calculate changes to IT resource demand
Now that you have identified projects to improve underlying IT capabilities, it’s time to calculate the demand they will place on IT resources.
Download Info-Tech’s Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator to obtain a realistic estimate of your project capacity. The calculator requires minimal up-front staff participation, and you can obtain meaningful insights on the distribution of your resources and their average work week or month. The calculator will yield a report that shows a breakdown of your annual resource supply and demand, as well as the gap between the supply and demand.
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Identify project metrics and target
Identify metrics and targets that will help track each initiatives’ progress and eventual success.
- Gather your team and revisit your list of IT initiatives.
- Go through each initiative and brainstorm the following:
- Key metrics (2-3 per goal) plus targets (1 per key metric)
- Identify key metrics for each initiative. Consider metrics that:
- Are related to critical digital business services or functions.
- Address known/visible pain points for the business.
- Are designed for supportive or influential stakeholders.
- Identify corresponding target dates for each metric. Identify an initial service objective based on one or more of the following options:
- Realistic and achievable by your team.
- Easy to measure and track.
- Establish an initial target date using historical trends or based on stakeholder requirements/expectations.
- Prioritize one metric that is of highest value for each initiative. Share in the larger group and assign a note taker to document them.
- Metrics will vary from company to company and initiative to initiative, so consider the examples at the upper right to kickstart your own metric development.
Estimate your project costs
Use the following line items when making budget calculations or changes.
Download Info-Tech’s IT Cost Forecasting Tool for help in calculating your new budget.
Which account?
Which cost type?
Items for consideration?
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Update your IT budget to account for new projects
Use this slide as a template for your own budget adjustment summary.
Create detailed IT project profiles for each high-priority initiative
The next slide is a template for your own project profiles.

Step 5: Build your IT initiative roadmap
Tasks:
- Consolidate projects into initiatives where necessary.
- Build your project / initiative timeline.
- Periodically review roadmap for relevance (see Phase 3.2).
Input | Output |
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Materials | Participants |
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Consolidate projects into broader IT initiatives where needed
Use an affinity mapping approach to roll up individual projects or initiatives into major IT programs. A project represents a single body of work or solutions, while a program is a collection of similar projects that achieve the same end outcome. Programs are key to establishing IT’s overall strategic goals and should be the focus or highlight of your strategic plan.
Affinity Mapping:
- Gather all projects and solutions brainstormed from previous activities (regardless of their size).
- Start to group them by similarity or the end outcome that they support.
- If they are initiative level, ensure they are moved to the top of the affinity map to represent the overall theme.
- If they are smaller projects, ensure they are categorized under the appropriate initiative name or brainstorm a name that fits the category if one does not exist.
- At the end of this activity, you should be left with an affinity map that showcases your key IT initiatives that will be represented on your roadmap and the individual projects that support it (which will be used by your IT team to execute it).
Roadmap your 12-month tactical plan
1. Digital Business Initiative #1 1. Deploy new devices 2. Deploy new industry software solution 3. Roll out staff training |
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Digital Business Initiative #2 10. Recruit two additional developers 11. Deploy new development tools 12. Reorganize enterprise data management processes |
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Digital Business Initiative #3 13. Enact data quality standards 14. Deploy new data reporting &BI Suite |
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A Gantt-style roadmap depicts IT initiatives, the associated goals, and exact start and end dates for each initiative. This diagram is useful for outlining a larger number of IT initiatives and for its easily digestible and repeatable format. Initiatives are the waypoints along a roadmap leading to the eventual destination, each bringing you one step closer. Like steps, initiatives need to be discrete: able to be conceptualized and discussed as a single, largely independent item. Each initiative must have three characteristics:
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This type of roadmap depicts IT initiatives, the associated goals, and exact start and end dates for each initiative. This diagram is useful for outlining a larger number of IT initiatives and for its easily digestible and repeatable format. |
Avoid projecting further than one year. Instead, dive deep into big-ticket items over a 12-month planning horizon.
Case Study, Part III
INDUSTRY: Supply Chain / Logistics
SOURCE: Info-Tech Research Group
Nesbitt Shipping
Outcomes of Project “Digital Garage”
To meet the newly-defined goal of reduced emissions and costs, the CIO realized that certain IT assets and services were needed.
Several IT services were identified as strengths thanks to the stakeholder satisfaction input from CIO Business Vision reporting, further identified as a competitive advantage according to the industry benchmarks provided in the report.
Specifically, the CIO deployed mobile devices to all drivers, equipped with telematics that measured tire degradation (plus other vehicle issues) and driving behaviors to the new fleet management solution. Enhanced reporting and driver prompts led to better, smarter truck maintenance and operator habits.
IT Delivers Results
Nesbitt Shipping’s CIO investigated and vetted three separate solutions that helped achieve the initiatives goals. After six months:
- Fuel economy improved by 0.66 gallons per every 62 miles per truck.
- Overall C0² emissions were reduced due to lower fuel consumption.
- Increased driver safety and reduced costs through faster maintenance.
IT innovation roadmap (recap)
You may reuse this guide for any future digital business initiatives that require IT support, or to innovate around business problems as they arise
Phase 2.2 | Phase 2.3 | Step 1: | Step 2: | Step 3: | Step 4: | Step 5: |
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Identify digital business initiatives prioritized by the organization. Leverage industry roundtables where necessary. | Understand the business case supporting each business initiative to validate the business initiative roadmap. | Leverage IT competencies to improve upon ‘business as usual’. Identify new and/or transformed digital business capabilities that need to be supported by IT. | Identify new or improved IT capabilities required to support these digital business capabilities. | Brainstorm and prioritize projects for improving or supporting IT capabilities. | Calculate changes to IT resource demand. Develop project metrics and estimate budget needs. Create project profiles. | Consolidate projects into initiatives. Build project timeline. |
Summary of key insights
By now you should have a firm understanding of the principles, desired actions, behaviors, and outcomes that have been presented in this methodology.
- Engage – Digital business initiatives cannot succeed without the full participation of the CIO and business stakeholders.
- Investigate – After receiving the prioritized list of digital initiatives and business cases, IT must innovate around requisite solutions.
- Innovate – CIOs can leverage the skills, knowledge, and experience of a ‘lights-on’ IT department to enable innovation.
- Verify – Business capabilities are only as effective as the technology capabilities that underpin them.
- Optimize – Prioritize for improvement any underperforming foundational IT capabilities needed to implement new assets or services.
- Inform – When building your IT initiative roadmap, be sure to include project metrics, resource changes, and budget asks.
- Review – Ensure that your IT initiative roadmap is a living document that is periodically reviewed and course-corrected.
Related Info-Tech Research
Assess how external environment presents opportunities or threats to your organization.
Align with the business by creating an IT strategy that documents the business context, key initiatives, and a strategic roadmap.
Design a strategy that applies innovation to your business model, streamline and transform processes, and make use of technologies to enhance interactions with customers and employees.
Research Contributors and Experts
![]() | Ross Armstrong Principal Research Director, CIO Advisory Info-Tech Research Group | ![]() | Joanne Lee Principal Research Director, CIO Advisory Info-Tech Research Group |
Ross Armstrong is a Principal Research Director in the CIO Advisory practice at Info-Tech Research Group, covering the areas of IT strategic planning, digital strategy, digital transformation, and IT innovation. Ross has worked in a variety of public and private sector industries, including automotive, IT, mobile/telecom, and higher education. All his roles over the years have centered around data-driven market research – in pursuit of insightful and successful product development and product management – at their core. In addition to his long tenure as an Info-Tech Research Group analyst, Ross has worked in research and product innovation positions at Autodata Solutions (J.D. Power), BlackBerry, and Ivey Business School (Western University). Ross holds a Master of Arts degree in English Language & Literature from Western University (UWO) and has served as an advisory board member for a number of not-for-profit and educational institutions. | Joanne is an executive with over 25 years of providing leadership in digital technology and management consulting across both public and private entities from solution delivery to organizational redesign across BC, Ontario, and globally. A Director within KPMG’s CIO Advisory Management Consulting services and practice lead for Digital Health in BC, Joanne has led various client engagements from ERP Cloud Strategy, IT Operating Models, Data and Analytics maturity to process redesign. More recently, Joanne was the Chief Program Officer and Executive Director responsible for leading the implementation of a $450M technology and business transformation initiative across 13 hospitals and community services for one of the largest health authorities in BC. A former clinician, Joanne has held progressive leadership roles in healthcare, with accountabilities across IT operations and service management, data analytics, project management office (PMO), clinical informatics, privacy and contract management. Joanne is passionate about connecting people, concepts and capital. |
Bibliography
Commendatore, Cristina. “Managing commercial truck tires in real time.” FleetOwner Magazine, 28 May 2021. Accessed 16 Jun. 2022.
Lytx, et al. “Trucking Statistics and Facts For Fleet Managers.” Lytx, 23 Nov. 2021. Accessed 16 Jun. 2022.
McElwain, Chad. “Manage Your Semi-Truck’s Fuel Use with These Tips.” Arrow Truck, 21 Feb. 2022. Accessed 16 Jun 2022
Gençer, Gӧrkem. “31 Digital Transformation Case Studies & Success Stories.” AI Multiple, 25 Apr. 2022. Accessed 16 Jun. 2022.
Michelin, WEF / Accenture Analysis. “Using IoT to extend the traditional business model and provide a more holistic mobility experience for customers.” World Economic Forum, 2022. Accessed 16 Jun. 2022.
CEO / owner of logistics company (anonymous). “Nesbitt Shipping: Case Study.” Info-Tech Research Group, Jun. 2022.