The 4C GROUP is pleased to announce that it is an official network partner of the renowned Hamburg IT Strategy Days.
In February 2025, the Hamburg IT Strategy Days will bring together the Who's Who of the IT management community in Hamburg for the 23rd time! The Hamburg IT Strategy Days 2025 offer numerous opportunities for personal exchange and networking as well as a wide variety of presentations by renowned speakers from business and science on the most relevant topics.
Our experts Martin Stephany and Markus Matschi will also be on site to hold interesting discussions with the CIO community and share valuable insights.
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CIO Advisory | Information Technology
We focus on the three central fields of action in the CIO Advisory
Information Technology in the Age of Digitalization and Industry 4.0
The importance of Information Technology and its drivers within the business is rapidly increasing in the face of new business opportunities brought by digitalization and Industry 4.0. The adoption of other technologies such as Big Data, Data Analytics, Social Media, Mobility/Connectivity, and Cloud Computing is leading to the creation of new products and services, as well as business models, processes, and value chains. These developments and changing expectations from businesses are putting pressure on IT departments to rethink their existing operational models and setups.
The CIO team faces a particularly challenging balancing act: On one hand, business units expect IT to quickly and dynamically implement significant innovations as part of the digital transformation, but on the other hand, they also expect the maintenance of existing IT services and systems. These should continue to be offered reliably, securely, and cost-effectively, and serve as a dependable backend for future digital services.
The pressure also stems from exaggerated expectations to create financial and resource leeway for investments and innovations in digitalization through efficiency improvements in legacy operations. Success in this area is anticipated through the standardization and consolidation of the IT landscape, migration to cloud computing models (whether SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS), and the intensification of nearshoring and offshoring.
Development of a forward-looking IT organization model
It remains to be seen which IT organization (target operating model) promises the greatest efficiency and probability of success given this range of tasks and balances the balancing act between evolution and revolution in the best possible way. In our view, trends such as bimodal or two-speed IT misjudge the reality in companies and make acceptance and feasibility in IT organizations more difficult. It is much more important to address the following dimensions for the entire IT organization and to work on them in a corresponding transformation process:
- Aligning IT management with new requirements and management responsibility
- Initiating the change process in the IT organization and among employees to apply new technologies, agile methods and new forms of cooperation
- Establishing and maintaining an integrative innovation process for IT and business
- Aligning IT, its systems and innovations with the user (customers, employees)
- Utilizing new sourcing options where appropriate and value-creating (e.g. cloud computing, cloud services) and establishing corresponding governance and control structures
- Analyzing and positioning the company in new areas such as IoT, blockchain or data analytics
- Providing flexible data exchange platforms and mechanisms (e.g. API architectures, data management)
- Securing increasingly open IT platforms and systems against misuse and data theft (e.g. cyber security, data security)
Positioning IT in the digital transformation
In addition to the realignment of IT, the IT strategy processes should clarify how IT can position itself within the company in the course of digitalization. If the business units set up their own platform products, this is often done without IT. It is also unclear to many departments why they need internal IT when they can obtain entire systems as a cloud service directly from the provider. The question of how these systems can be integrated from a data and security perspective is often initially ignored. The aim is for IT to actively introduce such SaaS or PaaS offerings itself and then act as a competent integrator and data architect/manager of the entire IT landscape.
4C Study 2021: "Key factors of successful CIOs"
What makes CIOs successful?
60 above-average successful CIOs have shared their experiences and recipes for success with us.
We are in a time of unstoppable change. While uncertainty is growing in many companies, digitalization continues to advance. How can CIOs meet this growing challenge? Our study "Key factors of successful CIOs" now provides the first comprehensive insight into the working world of CIOs at top German companies:
- Which factors influence the success of CIOs
- Why leadership skills are more important for CIOs than technical and business know-how
- What particularly attracts German CIOs to their position
- Where the IT bosses themselves see their greatest successes
You can find an overview of our most important findings in our article in CIO Magazine.
Our Focus
Cooperation
Publications
Publication: "What makes German CIOs successful"
Article is published in CIO Magazine in 2021
Publication: "Agilität ist keine Wunderwaffe"
Discover in our publication why agile initiatives fail and how to successfully transform into a flexible IT organization. Learn about delivering customer-centric IT services and the essential roles and structures required.
Article was published in CIO Magazine 2020
4C Study 2023: "Effective Governance of IT/OT Convergence"
The main focus of convergence to date has been on IT security. We shed light on other aspects of governance for successful convergence.
4C Study 2023: "Contribution and Success Factors of Sustainable IT"
Sustainability or CSR in IT is a new management challenge. But how do CIOs and IT sustainability managers benefit from CSR practices?
4C Study 2022/2023: "Leadership styles of successful CIOs"
Leadership is a daily exercise practiced with consistency. We focus on identifying the leadership styles of successful CIOs.
4C Study 2022: "Implementation of cybersecurity strategies in the energy sector"
This report provides insights into top management's awareness of cyber risks and highlights security challenges in the supply chain as well as the integration of future technologies.
4C Study 2023: "Attracting and retaining IT talent"
Discover key insights on how to attract top IT talent in our latest 4C study, "Attracting and Retaining IT Talent." This study answers crucial questions about what IT professionals look for in potential employers, their expectations from the recruitment and interview processes, and the most effective ways to engage them.
4C Study 2022: "Measuring and communicating IT business value"
What is IT Business Value and how can it be measured? What does IT Business Value show and what share does IT have in the company's success?
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