Rent your Chief Digital Officer (CDO)

In the age of Google, Facebook and Groupon, every organization whether a B2B or B2C, government or non-profit, need to have an effective digital strategy that can help them connect, influence, engage, sell and serve their customers online. Read more about what is a digital strategy and why do you need one.

Can you imagine a modern organisation that has no Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Or a bank or financial services organisation that has no CIO (Chief Information Officer)? A Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) company that has no Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)? Then how can a company do business as usual without a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) in their ranks?

1. Web business is taking over the way the world does business. Consider:
2. 2 billion of our planet’s population is online, making a number of business models that were not viable earlier, now viable and extremely profitable.
3. Everyday, consumers make their intent known via a billion search queries globally on Google, Bing and Yahoo.
4. 90% of all bank transactions happen online;
5. 25% of the time spent on media is online;
6. Consumers spent $x on online transactions in 2010.

The time to leverage the digital marketplace is now. The time to build a digital strategy is now. The time to dominate the market with a well thought out digital strategy implemented with discipline is now. Implementing a great digital strategy can make the difference between the winners and the have-beens in the next 5 years.

However, creating, implementing and managing a digital strategy requires advanced skills backed by knowledge and experience.

Digital business is complex. Place a pure engineer in this role and you would have websites and systems that are fast, elegant, well-engineered but not customer-friendly. These probably lack the customer insights that should have formed the base of the websites. Besides, they would have no idea how to promote the digital assets they have created.

Place a general manager in the role and the person may end up translating existing business processes to online systems. These systems would be inefficient, inelegant and are based on analogue thinking ported on to a digital platform.

So you need a magician who understands business processes but can also translate and communicate his understanding to designers and developers. They understand the digital marketspace but have their marketing and promotion concepts honed from years of selling.

Because of the importance of this role today, you may like to hire someone who will have the capability to work at C-level. You need a strategic thinker who is comfortable in presenting a business case, working out an ROI spreadsheet and dealing with privacy issues. And also seeing through a black-hat SEO tactic, deciding the life of a cookie and making sense of conversion analytics. A geek marketer will no longer suffice. You need a business strategist who understands technology.

In an industry that began just 15 years ago and came of age 3 years ago, these skills are hard to find and are expensive. There are only a few hundred, probably a few dozen professionals, who satisfy the above requirements to some extent.

So how can you find your chief digital officer?

1. Simplogy offers you to rent your CDO from us and get these benefits:
2. Highly skilled and competent: Simplogy’s CDOs are qualified in business management and are experienced in strategic planning and management of online business. They play at the intersection of data, technology, creative and strategy.
3. Flexibility: No need to hire full time. You can rent our consultant as your CDO for just one day per week. As your digital engagement grows, you may scale it up to full time or even several full time professionals.
4. Location: Your CDO can work from your office – attending your meetings, working with your staff, just as your other employees. Or, if you desire, they may work from Simplogy premises.
5. Trusted: Your CDO will only have your Web business interest in mind. They would have no incentive to bring more business to Simplogy and would be primarily paid on efforts basis and incentivized to achieve your business objectives
6. Access to specialized knowledge and resources: Your CDO will continue to develop their knowledge and skills with access to Simplogy’s structured staff training programmes and learning resources.

Renting your CDO would be a lot cheaper than hiring a dedicated professional as part of your team.

If your company is small with a small budget, your CDO would just invest a day every week meeting you and your team, discussing, building and implementing your digital strategy. If it is a medium sized company, they may invest 3 days or more.

Rent your Chief Digital Officer from Simplogy to benefit from a professionally designed digital strategy that is implemented well.

Download Details of Rent Your CDO as a PDF