A recent report by professional services firm KPMG Australia has highlighted that—for the third year running—digital transformation is the top concern for business leaders and CEOs.
According to the research, staying ahead in the digital race has executives restructuring their entire front, middle and back-office systems. Meaning EAs, with their unique understanding of the whole organisation, are well-positioned to advise their executives on the best digital direction to take.
But according to the report, organisations’ and their leaders’ attempts to tackle the latest tech are failing. “Several generations of CIOs have launched ambitious simplification and digitisation agendas, yet the hard reality is most of these transformation initiatives have failed to deliver the benefits,” the report reads.
“So, when a leader says: ‘I want to transform my whole organisation into something that’s future fit,’ it requires complete organisational unification on the mission. Such a job requires buy-in from all levels of leadership and willing cooperation within and across divisions.”
EAs’ presence at every level of a business means they can feed relevant information directly back to their executive or leadership team by advising on what strategies are working, which aren’t and what different departments need.
Another major hurdle preventing digitisation efforts is a disconnection with people, says the report. “Too many transformation initiatives in recent years have tended to forget about staff.”
This presents yet another opportunity for EAs. As ambassadors for their executives and often speaking on their behalf to the different layers of the business, EAs can help get the entire team on board by listening to their concerns and helping connect staff with the leadership’s ‘big picture’ goals.
