Technology implementation without proper planning often leads to wasted resources and missed opportunities. As organizations face mounting pressure to digitize, strategic IT planning becomes essential for successful transformation. Christophe Derdeyn, a seasoned IT strategist with extensive experience guiding enterprise-level digital initiatives, offers practical approaches to cut through technology hype. His methodology focuses on assessment, simplification, and data strategy before rushing into the latest innovations.
Assessing Existing Systems First
Many organizations overlook a crucial first step in digital transformation: understanding their current technology landscape. Christophe emphasizes starting with basics rather than rushing toward new solutions. “You can’t do everything at once,” Christophe says. “Unless you’re a startup, any organization typically has a history of applications and tools. If you want to strategize on how you’re going to evolve your organization, there are two things you need to be aware of: what do I have, and what is available that could make my life or the life of my users easier.”
This assessment phase often reveals immediate opportunities for improvement. Christophe points out how common it is for different departments to use similar but not identical tools, creating unnecessary complexity. “You need simplification before you can take a next step and look towards the future,” he notes. “Many organizations don’t typically do this because they introduce a lot of new stuff, it runs, and then starts to live its own life.”
Strengthening Data Foundations
While AI dominates technology conversations, Christophe warns against implementing advanced solutions without establishing proper foundations. “Everyone is hung up on AI, saying ‘I will use it for this and that.’ But what many don’t realize is garbage in, garbage out,” he cautions. “If you don’t have a proper data strategy, if you don’t know where your data sits, if you haven’t done harmonization of different data streams and models, you can say you’re using AI, but it won’t make a difference in how you become more effective.”
His recommendation? “Look at the basics first. Data is the new oil. That’s what will give you insights,” Christophe explains. He suggests organizations begin by identifying data repositories, addressing silos, and developing a comprehensive data strategy before exploring AI applications.
Improving Back Office Efficiency
Christophe sees particular opportunity in applying new technologies to finance and logistics functions, especially compared to previous automation approaches. “Five years ago, automation required a very rigid and clear script. Today that’s changing,” he observes. “With AI, you can automate a lot more than you could have five years ago.” He points to specific applications that deliver measurable benefits: “When you look at reconciliation of payments, matching invoices versus purchases—this is typically stuff that happens manually. With AI, you can go faster because once the model is trained, it will do the reconciliation fully in the background, find the matching, and just flag the exceptions.”
Not all organizations face the same transformation journey. Digital natives start with significant advantages, while established companies face greater challenges. “Young companies start in the cloud and immediately leverage those capabilities. They’re digital natives, so it doesn’t take them time to get there,” Christophe explains. “But even they need to be vigilant to avoid too much disparity, because human behavior is such that we all like our own little tools.”
For established enterprises with extensive legacy systems, transformation is necessarily more gradual. “If you look at historical companies with large footprints like Unilever or P&G, they have inertia because they have systems which work well and they rely on,” he says. For these organizations, Christophe suggests focusing transformation efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact. “It’s going to take decades for them to really transform because many areas don’t need any change. If it isn’t broke, you don’t need to fix it.”
Connect with Christophe Derdeyn on LinkedIn to learn more about his digital strategy insights.
