Global Company Mechatronical Engineering - IT Strategy, IT Operating Model and CIO Change

The company has become a global market leader in offering specific highly complex mechatronic engineering products. Now new challenges are ahead. Industry 4.0 has a significant impact: the products need to become significantly "smarter" with software enablement at the next level, and digital eco-systems must be offered within which the products can operate. Furthermore, time-to-market needs to be dramatically reduced to maintain market leadership.

While being economically very successful, rotations of board members, tight KPI-based management, and internal competition on IT resources put significant pressure on the IT function of the enterprise. Further symptoms of the past are having a higher than average rotation frequency on the CIO position and increased staff turnover of IT employees.

Challenges and opportunities in IT governance, IT leadership, a transformation to SAP S/4HANA, IT security, higher speed in the journey to the cloud, and the broadening of industry 4.0 initiatives are ahead.

The goal of the project was to develop a new future-oriented IT strategy and IT operating model with the interim CIO, considering the following key points in particular:

• Align with the updated business strategy
• Reflect the needs and priorities of the business functions
• Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the current IT landscape, the IT operating model as well as the context of architecture, IT sourcing, the project portfolio, and business / IT alignment
• Prepare for the new permanent CIO, having a (draft) target IT operating model ready
• Consider the identified challenges and opportunities in IT governance, IT leadership, a transformation to SAP S/4HANA, IT security, higher speed in the journey to the cloud, collaboration with the business using agile methods, and the broadening of industry 4.0 initiatives

The following approach has been taken to develop a new future-oriented IT strategy and IT operating model with the interim CIO:

• Settings session(s) with the interim CIO
• Interviews with the board, IT leadership, IT management, and representatives of all business functions
• Analysis of the existing IT strategy and key documents, as well as a briefing workshop series with the IT executives
• Development of an updated IT vision and guiding principles
• Development of an updated capabilities map and cornerstones for the IT operating model, considering agile methods
• Alignment with the board and detailing of the target picture for the IT operating model
• Finalization of the formal IT strategy and target IT operating model with the new permanent CIO

The project length for developing a new future-oriented IT strategy and IT operating model, as well as performing the finalization with the new CIO, was approximately 5 months.