---
title: "Every Enterprise Needs a Chief Digital Officer (CDO)"
description: "【Digital Practice Driving Business Growth: First Lesson】 is a comprehensive digital training for CDOs, CIOs, digital directors, digital offices, and digital teams: 1. It will propose a comprehensive digital blueprint for enterprises (big picture, medium picture, small picture); 2. Organize study tours to observe digital super benchmarks; 3. Share three digital benchmark cases; 4. Interpret six digital system modules; 5. Provide a digital implementation practice workshop. This summer! Let us light the way for you, see the direction of digitalization, and guide you hand-in-hand to draw your enterprise's digital map!"
author: "刘春雄"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-05-27"
language: "en"
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---

# Every Enterprise Needs a Chief Digital Officer (CDO)

> 【Digital Practice Driving Business Growth: First Lesson】 is a comprehensive digital training for CDOs, CIOs, digital directors, digital offices, and digital teams: 1. It will propose a comprehensive digital blueprint for enterprises (big picture, medium picture, small picture); 2. Organize study tours to observe digital super benchmarks; 3. Share three digital benchmark cases; 4. Interpret six digital system modules; 5. Provide a digital implementation practice workshop. This summer! Let us light the way for you, see the direction of digitalization, and guide you hand-in-hand to draw your enterprise's digital map!

**【Digital Practice Driving Business Growth: First Lesson】 is a comprehensive digital training for CDOs, CIOs, digital directors, digital offices, and digital teams:**
**1. It will propose a comprehensive digital blueprint for enterprises (big picture, medium picture, small picture);**
**2. Organize study tours to observe digital super benchmarks;**
**3. Share three digital benchmark cases;**
**4. Interpret six digital system modules;**
**5. Provide a digital implementation practice workshop.**
**This summer! Let us light the way for you, see the direction of digitalization, and guide you hand-in-hand to draw your enterprise's digital map!**
**Welcome to scan the QR code in the image above to chat with us about your views on digitalization.**

****-01-****
The hottest positions right now are **CDO** and **data analyst**.
If you don't believe it, just look at the salary growth for these roles.

****-02-****
Enterprises of a certain size used to have a CIO (Chief Information Officer).
Informatization has become standard for leading Chinese enterprises.
**Remember that Liu Chuanzhi, founder of Lenovo, once said that without ERP, a company of Lenovo's scale could not operate.**
**The normal operations of large enterprises are actually driven by information systems.** Therefore, the CIO is relevant to every department in the enterprise. The role of the CIO in the enterprise is shown in the figure below.

****-03-****
Later, with the advent of e-commerce, O2O, and other digital channels, some enterprises established a CDO (Chief Digital Officer).
**What is the difference between informatization and digitalization? One is offline data, the other is online data. The difference is not small.**
**At this stage, the CIO is responsible for the overall information work of the enterprise, while the CDO is responsible for local online business, such as e-commerce. The CDO is subordinate to the CIO.**
Because only departments like e-commerce were online, the early leaders did not yet qualify for CXO-level titles, and they were often referred to by various names, usually responsible for mid-to-back-office work.
Only after B2B advanced did the so-called CDO or digital office or digital director titles emerge. Let's assume they are CDOs at the director or department level. The relationship between the CDO and other departments is shown in the figure below.

# ****-04-****
Now, enterprises have embarked on comprehensive digitalization.
**Comprehensive digitalization aims to achieve five types of online presence: people online, products online, users online, business online, and management online.**
Being online means being digitalized.
Not just in marketing, but all people, all business, and all management being online constitutes comprehensive enterprise digitalization. **Therefore, informatization is being replaced by digitalization; either the CDO replaces the CIO, or the CIO transitions to CDO.**
In short, every enterprise needs a CDO.
From digitalization of emerging businesses, to comprehensive digitalization of marketing, to comprehensive enterprise digitalization, CDOs are extremely scarce and in high demand.
In comprehensive enterprise digitalization, the role of the CIO is shown in the figure below.

****-05-****
**In the long run, the CDO is a role that runs through the entire business of the enterprise.** All online business of the enterprise is connected through the system for which the CDO is responsible.
**In the short term, the CDO is an emergency role.** Because from 2020 to 2021, enterprise digitalization achieved a triple jump. More than 60% of large and medium-sized enterprises have started or nearly completed comprehensive marketing digitalization and are now pushing toward comprehensive enterprise digitalization.
**The first thing a CDO must do is to fully understand the trends and dynamics of digitalization in Chinese enterprises, especially the digital progress of benchmark enterprises.**
Currently, in the media, emerging enterprises, even with only 100 million yuan in sales, have a loud voice. In contrast, enterprises with tens of billions or hundreds of billions in revenue are quietly advancing their digitalization.
Quiet does not mean no progress; it means they do it without talking. Based on my understanding of some enterprises' digitalization, the pace is quite fast. Even at the middle management level, many enterprises are familiar with digitalization.
**The second thing a CDO must do is to draw a panoramic view of comprehensive enterprise digitalization.** This includes the big picture, medium picture, small picture, roadmap, and operation map. After all, comprehensive enterprise digitalization cannot be achieved in one step; it requires systematic design and orderly advancement.
Digitalization work can no longer be pushed passively; it must be advanced actively and orderly.
The third thing a CDO must do is to comprehensively transform the business based on digitalization. Digitalization work has roughly gone through three stages:
**Stage 1: Establish new departments, leaving traditional departments unchanged. Although online and offline may interfere with each other, they operate separately.**
**Stage 2: Traditional business + digitalization, using digitalization as an efficient tool.**
**Stage 3: Digitalization transforms traditional business; purely traditional business no longer exists.**
In the third stage, there are both new departments and the transformation of traditional departments. **Midea was originally a highly decentralized divisional system, with dozens of information systems in the Midea Group. Comprehensive enterprise digitalization means that all departments and all business are connected through data, hence the proposal of "One Midea, One System, One Standard."**
**Stage 1 is the start, Stage 2 is comprehensive planning, and Stage 3 is comprehensive transformation.**
The role the CDO currently plays is the comprehensive planning of digitalization in Stage 2.

****-06-****
In Stage 1, passive forcing meant digitalization was a department manager-level job.
As the promoter of comprehensive digitalization, the CDO must rapidly advance comprehensive enterprise digitalization.
**Therefore, the CDO must quickly accumulate digital knowledge, vision, and experience in the short term, and combine enterprise resources and progress to propose a comprehensive digitalization panoramic view, roadmap, and operation map.**
**How can a CDO quickly complete comprehensive digital planning in the short term? I believe there are four aspects:**
**First, quickly accumulate digital knowledge.** Currently, knowledge and literature in the digital field are mostly about 2C. There is very little about 2B and BC integration. However, the focus of comprehensive enterprise digitalization is precisely the digital transformation of traditional business. Therefore, knowledge about digitalization of traditional mainstream business should be accelerated.
**Second, quickly understand the digital trends and progress of traditional Chinese enterprises.** Given that traditional enterprises do more and talk less, it is not easy to find benchmarks. Therefore, study tours to benchmark enterprises are a very good way.
**Third, quickly build a digital blueprint, roadmap, and operation map through workshops or other methods.** Workshops are an effective way for two-way interaction with external experts, combining theory and practice, especially for immature businesses, and can quickly improve the team's cognitive level in the short term.
**Fourth, promote local operations.** First connection, then operation. Connection generates costs, operation generates revenue.
Digitalization without revenue is often considered "interference" by business departments, or even "nonsense."
A few people can be persuaded, but the majority can only be "conquered." That is, use facts to "conquer" those who cannot be persuaded. This is true for any transformation, and digital transformation is no exception.
**Find areas (departments) with high awareness, find products that are easy to operate, and through operations first form a demonstration effect, then you can quickly advance digital transformation.**

****-07-****
Previously, digitalization was taken step by step without a script.
Now, digitalization has a blueprint and roadmap, advancing orderly according to the script.
The main work of the CDO now is to propose the script for the digital blueprint.
Once digitalization becomes normal, perhaps only when digital systems have problems will the importance of the CDO be realized.
With the comprehensive advancement of digitalization, perhaps only when enterprises fall behind in digitalization will the value of the CDO role be recognized.
May the CDO community in Chinese enterprises grow rapidly!


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