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The tensions are running high lately at boards’ level regarding the rapid changes and progress in technology and not knowing the possible impacts on the businesses’ future performance, profitability, confidentiality of data or even continuity.

The fumbling from the risks of information technology increases especially in traditional boards that include members who are unacquainted with this domain and who don’t appreciate the extent to which their firms depend on “information assets”. Many are oblivious of the importance of information technology in shaping the strategies of their companies and the risks which could disturb their business due to system failures or security breaches.

This lack of awareness often leads to a slowdown or negligence in making fateful and even existential decisions. There are many examples of global companies who did not realize the stimulus of technological developments on their businesses and their future; their hesitancy led to massive losses, shares falling, and even bankruptcy.

The Importance of IT Governance

Still, in many western and eastern countries, boards don’t give special importance to the subject of IT governance due to unfamiliarity with the topic. Board members often lack the basic knowledge necessary to ask key questions about technology risks and around the impact of high-tech changes on the business itself.

Traditionally, this responsibility is left to the information technology executives, who define the course of action according to their whims. Therefore, the lack of control over IT activities by the Board is treacherous as it could expose the organization to the same risks resulting from incompetent assets or financial management.

Several global companies have understood the IT threats and risks and have created special board committees to monitor and oversee the Information technology’s activities. The IT governance team worked closely with the audit and governance committees. Subsequently, IT governance committees were recognized and became a major and auxiliary in carving strategic decisions and monitoring company’s IT performance. Involving IT governance at board level led these companies to gaining competitive advantages in their markets i.e.: Procter & Gamble, Vodafone, Wall Mart, and Federal Express.

The Role of the IT Governance Committee               

The boards, who decide to oversee the activities and the impact of information technology on their businesses, need to form an IT governance committee. It starts by recruiting independent directors or specialists, who their main role is the preparation of the committee’s charter and its relationship with other board committees.

After its formation the committee's main task is to understand the IT roadmap of the executive management and its impact on the company's business in the foreseeable terms. What should distinguish the work of a competent committee is its ability to bridge the knowledge and communication gaps between the executive management and the board of directors. Accordingly, the role of the committee is pivotal, since it will help the executives to avoid digging into technical details and technological terms but to focus on the opportunities available and draw a broader picture of their IT strategy and its impact on the business growth and success.

The committee’s role is also to review the cyber security measures implemented by the company and engage specialists to assess the vulnerability of the firm vis-à-vis cyber threats. A Gulf flavored GDPR will be applied soon in United Arab Emirates which will force most companies to review their IT and cyber security measures in order to comply with the state rules and regulations concerning user data protection.

In addition to the above tasks, IT governance committee’s further role is to challenge the IT projects proposed by executive management and its efficacy and necessity; to assess the success of projects implemented and its contribution to the business’s progress; to inquire the adoption of certain technologies which might not benefit the firm or could be a waste of time and money.  

The IT governance committee is as important as the audit committee. Its role helps to balance the current business and future needs; ensure the seriousness and feasibility of investments in IT projects; ensure the protection of “digital assets” and “business continuity”. The relationship between these two committees should be close; for IT matters can affect economic and regulatory issues, IT governance committees are geared to understand the fundamental dynamics governing changes in technology and its ability to transform the company's economic outlook.

How Global IT Governance Committees Successfully Fortify the Board

Boards supported by IT governance committees, and who valued the positive influence of technology on the business’s fortune, have contributed to their companies’ success. Accurate information and peculiar data analysis have assisted the boards in understanding the dynamism of competing markets, customers behaviors, and the importance of customers’ experience. Those boards reacted to the changing dynamics of their markets and took swift decisions based on information that boosted their profits and raised their shares.

Finally, forming an IT governance committee is crucial and requires strict commitment and discipline by the Chairman of the board and all members for the success of the committee's work. Board members and senior executives need to assess the impact of information technology on the company's business and strategy and determine whether the formation of an IT governance committee is essential to their business or not.

Antoine Alam

CEO – BluGrass Technologies

Certified Board Member

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You see the end product but we’re bringing you closer to the people behind it ! 

Among our recent partnerships, we joined forces with Ubility.  

To bring the service provider closer to YOU, we sat down with their CEO Khaled Dassouki, to gain firsthand insight on the things they do and the types of human capital profiles that drive their success.  

Khaled is a Lebanese national with an engineering background and PhD in Artificial Intelligence & Security obtained at Université de Technologie de Troyes, France. 

As a result of over 20 years in the field, Khaled decided to establish Ubility in France and build it on a base of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Experience, which was considered to be highly innovative as it was a niche field.  

Khaled was quick to notice that there had been a shift in the way business was carried out, the shift had been made to be more customer-focused. With that came new challenges, the ease with which customers can connect with the business led to a huge influx of queries and requests for support, which was very time consuming, tedious, and required businesses to grow their customer support teams leading to higher costs. 

While growing their teams did solve some challenges momentarily, organisations were quick to realise that the complexity and average time required to resolve customer challenges was growing which eventually led to dissatisfied customers. Not only that, customer service agents were quickly burning out as they were answering an ever-growing list of routine questions rather than helping solve complex problems and offering innovative solutions.  

Taking all that into account, Ubility offered an AI-powered platform that learns from interactions between an organisation’s customers & their customer care team to enable quick suggestions of appropriate solutions that could solve a customer’s challenge in seconds rather than minutes.  

In addition to that, Ubility also offers AI training for professionals in the IT industry, a sales chatbot that is based on a recommender system and knows the sales cycle, and AI Consultancy in which they are recruited to build and implement AI services in response to an assessment of an organisation’s processes. 

Success Story 

Ubility was commissioned by a Telecom operator in the gulf to assess and analyse their IT processes. After a thorough analysis done by their team of experts, it was concluded that a huge portion of their IT processes had an opportunity for automation.

After studying the best ways in which they could automate their processes, they determined that incorporating AI would allow the elimination of a manual process by looking at historical data. Instead of their operational costs raking up to 50,000 USD a month, they were now cut by 80% to be only 10,000 USD.  

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