'The most important role of the board this decade is to maintain digital trust'

Chris Gabriel of Logicalis discusses how the role of the board will change in the 2020s

As we enter the 2020s, executive board leadership across private and public sector organisations will be contemplating how their roles will change as we accelerate into a more digitally driven future.

The IoD (Institute of Directors) in the UK highlights one key role of the board in their responsibilities to shareholders and stakeholders: "to be sufficiently knowledgeable about the workings of the company to be answerable for its actions, yet able to stand back from the day-to-day management of the company and retain an objective, longer-term view."

It is a fascinating responsibility.

How does a board member stay knowledgeable enough to ensure they and their colleagues can steer the overall governance of their business when the very heart of their industry, business, and business model are being influenced by things they may have little or no experience in, or knowledge of?

There are some key digital indicators that most boards should measure, to ensure their business strategy and digital strategy stay aligned.

Digital Trust Probably the most important role of the board now is to ensure their business creates and maintains digital trust across everything it does. This includes cybersecurity, the new fundamental health and safety of the digital world. But digital trust must also spread far and wide across the business.

How the business uses its customers' data is more vital than cyberdefences. How the business implements machine learning while making ethical decisions; how the business adopts automation. Keeping my data safe so you can abuse it won't make me feel safe. Digital trust is easy to assume, hard to institutionalise, and easy to destroy.

Digital Performance The easiest decision for a board to make is to shift their business to more digital channels. Banks were the first to shift their customers online after the financial crash of 2008.

Within a few years, the online and mobile digital capability and performance of all banks became a defining element of customer experience, and as a result, customer loss and acquisition. We are all willing to queue for a counter in a branch and we may even queue for an automated machine to pay in money. But who wants to queue for their online or mobile bank?

Who wants to queue for any digital service? Nobody.

Digital Adaptability The only thing guaranteed to stay the same is the rate of change accelerating for all businesses. If change is guaranteed, the best way of being ready for change is to be adaptable.

If no business is set in stone, then an IT strategy/architecture must also be able to embrace change. Not uncontrolled change, of course, and for most it doesn't mean flipping applications from one cloud service to another on a daily basis. Making core IT platforms adaptable to change will be a key question every board member should be asking themselves when signing off major investments in the new digital decade.

Imagine a university buying a network in 2020 that will last for five to seven years. What will students be bringing on campus in five years? How much teaching and learning will have flipped online? How many IoT devices could be connected on the growing smart campus? What new services will student services want to build on top of that network to improve student experiences or safety?

Why is SD-WAN becoming the hottest software-defined technology at the moment? Because old MPLS networks were too static and difficult to adapt to new requirements. They weren't adaptable; or the service providers who sold them weren't.

Containers are making applications more adaptable to change. Even storage is becoming more adaptable with vendors such as NetApp creating "data fabrics", giving much greater levels of choice to where data is stored, processed and analysed.

The board must always ask the question 'what happens if things change?' If the CIO can answer that question, they are measuring a digital, not analogue, world.

Digital Personalisation Digital is about you. Netflix works because it recommends what you should watch. Amazon rules the retail world because the platforms know what you want before you need it.

So the board need to be able to measure what turns their digital investments into digital differentiation. If all retailers are forced (or choose) to use exactly the same systems and platforms, then what is different about their business? It's how they personalise the customer experience through platforms, processes and the people who rely on them to engage with their customers.

The world is becoming unimaginably programmable and developable.

In February 2020 network professionals will be able to become certified in Cisco DevNet. That will enable them to develop, integrate and automate the underlying network, security and collaboration systems that underpin the business. That's a huge indication of where the next digital decade will take us.

Therefore the board needs to be able to measure digital personalisation and what edge their investments give their business over their competitors. Their survival in the next digital decade depends on it.

These are the key areas I think the board must become more knowledgeable in over the next few years. The board doesn't need to be a group of experts in every technology their business invests in.

But in the digital world, measuring the business in a new way will ensure the board stays on top of their duties in a way that assures shareholders that they have grasped their role in guiding and governing their business' digital future.

Chris Gabriel is director of technology at Logicalis.This article first appeared on LinkedIn.