Understanding The Role & Responsibilities of a CTO
Between the great resignation, growing demand for a more flexible work-life, and an increasingly competitive market, companies are finding new ways to stay on top. Your plan should include automating lower-value activities to free up more time for employees to handle revenue-generating tasks.
Gartner reveals that up to half of today's work could be automated for about 1/5 the cost. Embracing that opportunity can help your company flourish while creating new, more fulfilling jobs. The question is, how do you even begin? For most companies, it means turning to a CTO/CIO to prioritize automation opportunities and create a tech strategy that supports your goals.
Because a CTO is dedicated to supporting and delivering technological innovations for your company and managing their practical use, they can significantly accelerate business growth through activities such as automation. So, if you're thinking about hiring a CTO, here's what you need to understand about this vital role and what you need to look for in the proper partner.
What is a CTO?
A Chief Technology Officer (CTO) should be your firms thought partner that serves to power business growth by guiding the utilization of various technologies. Given that technology is already a core component in the profitability, management, and success of businesses of all sizes, the role of a CTO should not be underestimated.
While CTOs were traditionally viewed as more operational team members, changes in the market landscape have led them to take on a much more strategic role. This person should have excellent knowledge of the business workflows and the use of technology to support efficiency and revenue generation at all levels and should fill the gap that's holding your business back.
Responsibilities of a CTO
The immediate responsibility of a CTO is to align your organization's investments in technology with your greater business goals. On paper, it might sound simple, but this process requires a strategic partner to understand the tech gaps in operations, marketing, service delivery, customer service, and all verticals in between.
In addition to understanding where your organization's current solutions and processes fall short, a CTO aims to research opportunities to help you improve performance in key areas. All the while, they are working within a set budget while collaborating with other team members to manage the implementation, adoption, and returns of each tech project they propose.
As such, the primary responsibilities of such a strategic partner may include:
Managing the personnel and suppliers associated with implementing, adopting, and utilizing technology solutions.
Guiding the development of custom solutions and integrations, such as proprietary software and apps.
Communicating with board members to understand business objectives and explain the role of technology in achieving them.
It's important to note that the role of a CTO looks different for a startup than it does for an established company. For that reason, it's essential to assess where your business is along with your timeline for growth before you select a partner to help you get there.
Evaluating Your Organization's Needs
While the purpose of a CTO is always to align technology with business objectives, how they function depends greatly on the state of the business they are helping. For instance, startups may involve a CTO before they even launch. In this case, their tech strategist is often engaged in business viability and planning, product development, marketing, and so on.
As a company matures, this same tech strategist will become less involved in the day-to-day operations as their skills and insights are better managed at scale. Frequently, this results in a CTO shifting away from operational management and more into strategic leadership through a technical lens.
While CTOs often blend both into their role, the phase and goals of your organization will impact the responsibilities you should expect them to take on. As a result, these factors will also influence who you hire for the job.
Considerations When Hiring a CTO
Once you understand the specific attributes that your organization is searching for in its CTO (e.g., the ability to help with product development), the next step is considering what other characteristics you should consider when hiring a CTO.
For the best results, you should seek out a strategic partner that checks these boxes:
Security-Focused: Knowledge and commitment regarding data privacy and cyber security. The best partners have their finger on the pulse of regulations and best practices regarding data governance and transparency.
Innovative: Deep familiarity with the latest innovations in foundational technologies, such as cloud-based and mobile systems. Choosing a partner with outdated methodologies will make it challenging to adopt competitive new tech, like automation, big data analytics and cause scaling issues in the future.
Scaled Up: Experience working with complex tech stacks, which requires them to know how to properly integrate various services together and effectively manage systems without compromising productivity or technical performance (e.g., speed).
Big Picture Outlook: It's easy to find CTOs that are passionate about development or hyper-focused on the latest tech, but that alone isn't enough. You should seek out someone who is balanced, meaning they are a generalist that can talk business, explain things in laymen's terms, and create significant progress toward business goals and most importantly execute.
Even if a potential hire fits all of the above criteria, remember that they must also fit your company's culture, match your values, and adopt your long-term outlook to support your key objectives. The best way to find that person is to spend some time speaking with an expert.
Grow Your Business With a Virtual CTO
Particularly for startups and growing businesses that want to retain tight control over their finances, hiring a CTO outright is often an expensive option. As such, the rise of virtual or "fractional" CTO services has rapidly proven valuable to companies of all sizes looking for a new C-suite member that can support their strategic growth as the cost of not having this partner is significantly higher than having one.