What is Chief Digital Officer (CDO)?
A chief digital officer (CDO) is an executive who focuses on driving the growth of a company, region, or government through the digitization of data. The Chief Digital Officer identifies all potential areas that can be digitized and interact with each other. Given the importance that data, or big data, has in the modern world, the chief digital officer has both expansive and ever-changing roles and responsibilities.
The role of the chief digital officer is sometimes confused with that of the chief data officer, although they have quite different roles in terms of responsibilities.
Since the beginning of the hiring of Chief Digital Officers, the roles and responsibilities of companies have changed dramatically. In the past, Chief Digital Officers were expected to take digitization to some basic levels and probably run some pilot digitization projects. They are now expected to transform the fortunes of a company by driving digitization across the company.
The Chief Digital Officer's responsibilities include:
- Identify potential digitization opportunities and weak points
- Identify sales potential from digitization opportunities and drive the initiative forward
- Increase in customer satisfaction through digitization initiatives
- Enabling employees with skills related to digitization
The Chief Digital Officer reports to the CEO or COO. The role of the Chief Digital Officer is becoming more and more important as more and more companies go digital.