Why the role of the chief digital officer shouldn't exist in 10 years' time

If the main reason for their job is to transform companies - then surely by 2025 there should be no need for a £110,000-a-year CDO, argues Sooraj Shah

There is perhaps no other role with as much of a fanfare in the 2015 world of business technology than the chief digital officer (CDO) job (aside from perhaps the "data scientist") - so much so that those taking up CDO positions are raking in as much as £110,000 per annum, according to ReThink Recruitment.

And every organisation seems to be catching the "digital" bug: from the likes of foreign currency exchange provider Travelex to Lastminute.com, and from local councils to heavyweight insurance firms (albeit RSA's CDO Ian Hood left after only two months). Even the government has got in on the act - hiring its first ever CDO, Conall Bullock, to combine the previously separate duties of the CTO, CIO and CDO.

And while the numerous job roles have differences in their responsibilities in their respective organisations, the fact that they have someone looking after "digital" shows the importance that companies are placing on their digital marketing efforts - yep that's marketing - anyone in touching distance of a CDO will tell you that the role places just as much, if not more importance on marketing than IT.

But one of the problems with buzzwords, particularly in IT, is that companies may cotton on to the idea of going "digital", but not really know what they're getting into. Just ask Jos Creese, CDO at Hampshire County Council who urged organisations not to start at IT when looking for true digital maturity. In his comment piece on Computing, Creese said that many firms could be tempted to simply improve IT - a positive for a CIO perhaps, but maybe not so for the organisation as a whole.

As Phil Pavitt, global CIO of Specsavers told me: "If we're not careful in the IT world, CEOs particularly will begin to think and realise that digital is like the new millennium bug - a huge excuse to spend a huge amount of money."

And Creese suggested that suppliers are also sharp to this.

"[Suppliers are] scenting organisations that are prepared to spend on ‘digital' tools to apparently propel their business forward and by doing so buy their way into a fashionable digital club."

What firms need to ensure that they don't get sucked into purchasing unnecessarily tools is an independent eye: in comes the chief digital officer.

Travelex's CDO, Sean Cornwell, told me that this independent eye should report into the CEO - and that anything else would be setting up for failure. A comment that Lastminute.com's CDO, Pascal Moyon, agreed with.

"It's not an IT role, it's a business role, and if anything it's closer to marketing than technology. Technology is just an enabler, but it's really about transforming the organisation. I'm closer with the CMO than the CIO, but we need to speak both languages," he told me.

I can see where they're coming from - in that CIOs have existing IT infrastructure to look after, and a CDO needs to look at the business from the bottom up without having any conflicted interests.

But I'm sure Pavitt and others, such as Paddy Power CIO Fin Goulding, may think differently. Pavitt recently hired an IT digital director to work alongside a marketing digital director at Specsavers - they will report in to the CIO (Pavitt himself) and the CMO respectively.

Goulding, meanwhile, believes that the CDO position has always been around in different forms. At Paddy Power, he said the equivalent responsibilities are being carried out by the chief product officer - suggesting he doesn't see the need for a CDO at the company.

The point is, however, that if a CDO was unable to look at the company objectively, then it may take him or her a lot longer to get the job done (as would perhaps two roles rather than one). And that job should only take a few years - even according to the CDOs themselves.

"I don't think it would be healthy for the CDO role to last more than two to three years," Lastminute.com's Moyon told me at Nimbus Ninety's IGNITE conference earlier this week.

Travelex CDO Cornwell went as far as to say that he believes the role itself wouldn't be around in 10 years' time.

"The CDO job is a catalyst role, it's transitionary, it is there to drive change and businesses don't have chief paper officers or chief telephone officers, so will there be CDOs in 10 years' time? Probably not - but it might morph into something else - perhaps chief data officers, which some organisations already have," he suggested.

"But, ultimately, if I'm successful in my role - my role should not exist in three to four years' time because digital will cut across the whole organisation and we will be a fully digitally-embraced organisation," he added.

Like Cornwell, Pavitt draws a comparison with quality managers decades ago. "They would employ quality managers in companies and people would say ‘I don't do quality, it's the job of a quality manager' - the moment when you no longer had quality managers, I realised it was a part of my job, and it's the same with digital."

But Pavitt warned companies that still had a CDO after the first wave of disruption, that they may have missed the point.

And Cornwell's damning take on how Google or Facebook employees would react to a CDO entering the fray in one of their companies says it all.

"Let's be frank: if you walked in to Google or Facebook with a job title of CDO, you'd get laughed out of the door - the CDO role is ridiculous," he told me.

Why? Because companies like Facebook and Google don't need that disruption - they're already digital, and other companies are striving to get there.

That's why in 10 years' time, there shouldn't be a need for CDOs any longer. Lastminute.com's Moyon disagrees - he thinks they will continue to work at firms for two to three years at a time, transforming organisations to become fully digital, even a decade from now.

That's probably true - but only because some organisations would have been too slow in the first instance to hire a CDO/attempt to go "digital", or because those firms that did hire a CDO/attempt to go "digital", went through the process the wrong way. It'll be interesting to see which approach turns out to be the right one and whether CDOs will still be around in 2025.