One of the essential qualifications that a top executives need to cope with and understand is technology. Without understanding the importance of technology and the use of it, will make you very vulnerable as a top executive. Maybe one of the biggest challenges today is that top executives and management teams do not have a good enough understanding of technology, and do not quite understand what technology does for the business.
Digitalization is more than technology, it is as much about organizational change and new ways of working, where IT and technology is support functions for the organization. The top executives should not engage in detailed monitoring of daily operations and the use of hardware. It’s about understanding how we can use IT and technology to provide better and more efficient services. In short it is the strategic IT skills must be strengthened. A top executive with sufficient strategic IT gravity will also help ensure that it is the correct IT projects are prioritized and implemented. An important part of benefit realization. The top executive should no longer be reluctant to ask the IT department “dumb” questions because they cannot match the expertise. Then the organization run the risk that the one is developing several solutions that is nice to have but not have any value creating for the organizations.
Dr. Hole stared started his career by using technology as a tool to support organizational change in the National School fruit organization, and to increase the fruit and vegetables consumption in the primary school in Norway.
By standardizing the work process on how the National School Fruit organization was run, one managed to drive through organizational change in the organization. The new work process was first established, then one developed the new technology platform that supported the new work processes. By standardizing the processes and develop a new technology platform for the National School fruit, one manged to reduce the totally hours of 120.000 spend in administration of the concept by 3.260 primary schools in Norway.
Moreover, this also managed to increase the consumption of fruit and vegetables among children in the primary schools in Norway. The theology platform was implemented in 2004, and is still going strong in 2016. In other words, this was a technological solution that was far in front of its time.
This is only one of the cases Dr. Hole has succeed in, some of the cases he has contributed to developing new technological platforms is within Orkla Media Distribusjon, Orkla Media Digital, Tinde, Lindorff Accounting, Drammen Taxi BA, Taxus Norway, ITF (Internet Traffic Management) etc.
Technology is also one of the parts of the TIPS model developed by Dr. Hole.
Technology must always be developed to support the work process and not vica versa where technology comes first and then the work processes.