4 ways IT leaders can drive efficiency to cut costs

Today’s IT leaders face more challenges than ever before. As economic conditions remain uncertain, they’re tasked with reducing costs while still improving efficiency, productivity and both customer and employee experiences. 

At the same time, security remains paramount for organisations and customers. But maintaining world-class security and managing complex regulatory environments is often costly and time-consuming, particularly when working across global markets.

Although challenging, these circumstances also create opportunities for CIOs and IT leaders to play more strategic, visible roles across their entire organisations. 84% of IT leaders say that the CIO is becoming a changemaker for the larger organisation, tasked with spearheading business and technology initiatives, while 65% of CIOs agree that they’re now expected to drive business revenue.

As their roles evolve, CIOs and IT leaders need to find innovative ways to navigate these challenges, save time and money, and lead their organisations to new growth.

Here are four key challenges for IT leaders and how to overcome them.

1: Reducing costs to improve business resilience

Given the uncertainty of the global economy, the pressure is on CIOs and IT leaders to do more with less. Managing costs and reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for technology investments is crucial, but IT leaders are rightfully unwilling to sacrifice security or user experience.

The solution? Increasing operational efficiency, which 46% of IT leaders say is a top priority.

Improving internal processes using automation and integrations between core tools such as your contract management solutions and other key business solutions such as Salesforce, Workday and Microsoft helps you to reclaim hours and save money across the entire organisation. This means you get a better ROI on every tech investment, setting your organisation up for long-term success.

2: Modernising your tech stack to create better customer and employee experiences

Legacy tech can slow down internal teams, creating a poor employee experience (EX). And employee experience is directly linked to customer experience (CX), which is directly linked to success. One recent study finds that companies that spend time ensuring their employees are engaged outperform their competition by 147%.

So it’s no surprise that 46% of CIOs plan to dedicate more time to improving the employee experience next year.1 As an IT leader, the technology you invest in directly impacts the experiences of every employee and every customer every day. By modernising your tech stack, you can create faster, more efficient experiences that save time, cut costs and improve EX and CX.

What does that modern tech stack look like? Look for tools with out-of-the-box integrations as well as robust, trusted APIs that help you to securely integrate with your existing systems and automate your workflows. This unlocks a triple win for efficiency, saving you time on setup and ongoing maintenance.

3: Empowering teams to work productively from anywhere 

Today’s employees expect hybrid ways of working. To help their organisations attract and retain the best talent, IT leaders need to ensure that employees can safely and securely work from anywhere whether that’s the office or their couches.

That’s why most CIOs (61%) are prioritising hybrid and flexible work structures as one of their key priorities. But this can be especially challenging because working from anywhere opens up more risk when it comes to security and compliance.

Supporting workflows with secure, trusted tools that can be used from anywhere can help. For example, creating a centralised, integrated solution for key workflows such as contract lifecycle management and e-signatures can save time and allow teams to progress work securely whenever, wherever. 

4: Ensuring world-class security

Security has never been more important to IT leaders and CEOs. 52% of CIOs surveyed prioritise cybersecurity, while elsewhere a majority responds that their CEO’s top priority for IT is to “upgrade IT and data security to reduce corporate risk.”

In addition to increasing their cybersecurity, IT leaders need to be able to ensure their organisation’s technology allows them to meet a wider range of global regulations and increasingly complex compliance requirements. This is crucial not just for reducing risk, but also for winning and keeping enterprise customers, as well as for continued growth into new global markets.

Using secure, trusted digital solutions such as Docusign helps to keep your business and customer data secure, reduces risk and supports your compliance efforts. Using the right tools can significantly reduce the time and cost associated with ensuring world-class security and maintaining compliance while allowing IT leaders to focus on growth.

Learn how CIOs are adapting for the future