CIOs should evolve, not transform

I know a network equipment manufacturer that recently installed an expensive CRM system. The software itself worked flawlessly, but the company forgot about the “relationship” part of CRM, especially the connections between its own sales staff and the buyers at customer sites. These interactions have an emotional component that software can’t entirely replace.

For example, the company discovered that the software wasn’t flexible enough to handle the kinds of urgent requests—Hey, I need those routers in July, not October—that its human sales staff could easily accommodate. The company faced intense competition. Despite being known for top-tier products, it lost market share to firms with CRM systems that offered more flexible ways of working with customers.

Few sectors of the economy have invested more in IT than healthcare. Over the past decade, billions of dollars have been spent digitizing healthcare records. Here’s the catch: That infrastructure was built to accommodate the record-keeping needs of hospitals, not the health needs of patients.

Patients often visit new care centers when they move or travel, only to find that their records haven’t made the journey with them. These records need to be as mobile as the patient population has become, and not stay in their own siloed repositories.

Artificial intelligence can help problems like this. It can, for example, put together a palette of care by routing patients to the right specialists in the right locations. A patient with heart ailments could get a referral to a facility with the best coronary care, just as one suffering from lung ailments should be directed to a hospital with expertise in pulmonary medicine.

The goal of consistent personalized experiences is equally relevant to professional sports venues. Cloud-based systems can help sports franchises provide better service by mining customer data for simple insights about fan habits.

Did they buy beer at the start of the game? If so, have them ready for the next contest, even if it occurs at another venue. And make ticketing smart enough that fans can use their mobile devices to gain entrance, allowing groups of friends to meet at their seats rather than having to find each other in the crowds outside the venue at the start of the game.

In all these cases, the common denominator is the focus on bettering the human experience. Today’s workforce, increasingly dominated by digital natives, is increasingly intolerant of anything short of concierge-level attention and service.

Two very different generations of the Couture family mirror this transformation with their car purchases. My father was a happy Dodge customer who would visit his local dealer to arrange a trade-in when he was ready to buy a new one. My millennial son, on the other hand, buys his cars online and waits for them to be delivered to his driveway. Imagine the digital infrastructure needed to keep him happy.

The rickety systems of a bygone era don’t stand a chance. But neither do CIOs with modern technology if they aren’t focused on solving for human needs.