A global survey by interim management specialist IXPA has found that 85% of businesses underwent transformational change in 2017. The study looked at the key challenges facing organisations around the world over the past 12 months and asked leaders how they were tackling them.

A disconnect between the IT function and the rest of the business is harming many organisations’ ability to connect with their customers, argues Graham van Terheyden, and it’s time to put it right. The transformation expert explains how business leaders can realise the potential of their IT function – and perform better.

High-quality, well-managed data is crucial to give you a more sophisticated understanding of your customers and to drive better decision making. But before you can exploit data, it’s vital that you have sound governance in place – and the responsibility for that lies with the board, not your IT department.

With increasing pressure on CEOs to grow their businesses, accurate management information (MI) has never been so important. But as companies continue to invest heavily in transactional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to optimise their business processes, former finance director turned management consultant Paul Cullen believes many businesses are not getting the user-friendly, actionable MI they need from the huge amounts of data they have.