Dell Appoints New Chief Digital Officer To Become ‘Like A Software Organization’
‘We’re moving Design and DevOps to the forefront of IT, like a software organization,’ says Jennifer Felch, Dell’s new chief digital officer.
Dell Technologies has appointed a new chief digital officer tasked with internally driving digital transformation, moving DevOps to the forefront and creating more accountability for how solutions are designed.
Dell veteran Jennifer Felch is the company’s new chief digital officer, which combines the traditional roles and responsibilities of a CIO along with the emerging role of “change agent” for digital transformation, Felch said in a recent blog post.
“We are poised to take digital transformation to the next level, and I’m honored to be Dell’s new Chief Digital Officer to further hone and strengthen our engagement with business partners, cultivate a strong engineering and operational discipline and culture, and lead with simplicity and accountability,” said Felch. “It reminds me and my whole organization that we are a key enabler for digital transformation and much more than ‘keeping the lights on.’”
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Felch said she plans to move forward with Dell’s product-oriented approach that will drive more direct accountability for how solutions are designed and operated.
“We’re moving Design and DevOps to the forefront of IT, like a software organization,” she said. “With a better understanding of our customers’ and partners’ needs, we can more quickly adapt and introduce new capabilities to improve the overall experience. All of this relies on our continued work to modernize our applications and infrastructure by migrating to our private/hybrid cloud.”
Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell praised Felch on Twitter Wednesday for her new role.
Congratulations on the new role @JenFelch and thank you for your continued leadership on our digital journey at @DellTech.https://t.co/DQqQGkOP4E
— Michael Dell (@MichaelDell) September 4, 2019
Felch said the goal is to both digitally transform Dell’s IT processes and to enable business partners to do the same. “We’re working in balanced teams, with developers side by side with our business partners, and leveraging our DevOps and private cloud technology and practices,” she said. “A modern way of working is what Dell Technologies’ products and solutions enable for our customers and what we want to experience in our own work here at Dell.”
Felch was previously Dell’s senior vice president of IT Order Management and Finance. She has over 15-years of executive experience at the Round Rock, Texas-based infrastructure giant including top positions such as vice president of IT Enterprises Services and senior manager of Global Operations.
She said a unique aspect to Dell’s new operating model is that it features four critical “cross-functional” journeys: the customer journey, team member journey, product group enablement journey and product journey. Felch will lead a team to assume responsibility for these journey’s to drive focus, accountability and progress across the functional operations.
“As we drive our strategy from the perspective of the customer experience and operational excellence, I’m confident we have the right people, processes and technology to level up our digital transformation and improve the way we work,” said Felch.