Building your tech advantage: The strategic guide for CTOs

The CTO’s guide to using AI to gain a competitive advantage

From global enterprises to agile startups, every organisation is under pressure to stay relevant and gain a competitive advantage. HotTopics contributing editor and CTO Tom Tang shares how technology leadership and AI-driven strategies can give organisations a critical edge

As a CIO/CTO, my primary goals are to continually enhance business, tech productivity and improve customer engagement and service. 

Guided by the principles of 'thinking forward' and 'working smart', I understand that achieving these goals requires three core elements of good technology leadership: a talented team, efficient processes and cutting-edge technology.

This article is the first in a series for HotTopics, where I share and explore ways to create more productive and competitive organisations which can compete on the global stage.

How CTOs can stay ahead in a disruptive market

• Working smart with AI and automation
• Understand your organisational readiness for innovation and disruption
• Building your technology capability model: Build or buy?
• Do not underestimate the value of critical thinking

Working smart with AI and automation

What does working smart mean?  In the context of information technology, working smart means using modern technology to our advantage; automating tasks to achieve quality and productive outcomes. Automation can range from simple process and task automation to using AI/ML for more advanced analysis and augmented decision-making.

AI automation is everywhere in business and our daily lives. Leading companies use AI in many areas, like operations and customer service. Netflix uses AI to suggest shows you'll love. Conversely, Amazon uses AI and ML to help you find related products when you shop. Even traditional businesses, like the U.S. retailer Kroger, are leveraging AI to help engage and personalise customer experience and boost productivity. By 2030, PwC estimates that AI will contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy.

So, how can businesses use AI to compete, to become more competitive and more productive?  How can businesses adopt automation and AI to enhance customer engagement, as well as business productivity?

Automation and AI adoption are highly dependent on quality data and people capabilities, and as we’ll go on to explore, critical to improving productivity and competing with national and global brands. 

Is your organisation (and team) ready for AI innovation and disruption?

The journey of AI has undergone significant changes over the last ten years. During this time, organisations have shifted through different roles; they’ve had software engineers-algorithms, machine learning engineers, data scientists, data engineers and now prompt engineers. 

Business and technology teams in many organisations struggle to keep up with the fast-changing technology. This lack of adaptation hampers their ability to introduce new capabilities which boost organisational productivity and enhance customer engagement.

Leaders can build strong technology organisations that are capable, motivated and proactive. They must also keep their technology skills up-to-date. Doing this, they help business and technology teams introduce new technology and capabilities. 

For example, a previous organisation I worked with partnered with a well-known consulting company to re-organise the technology department.  As part of the re-organisation, the consulting company mandated that technology teams and leaders did not need to have technical capability.  After I joined, the same consulting company told me, ‘your technology teams have no capability – so just give us all your work.' This was such a shocking statement about the re-organisation that I initiated a deep-dive into my organisation's skills and capabilities.

Upon review, I redefined job families and capabilities, upskilling the technology teams so the company could deliver better outcomes – enabling better productivity, improved quality and at lower cost.  

What I learned from this is that not all consulting companies are aligned to deliver great organisational outcomes. So before blindly selecting consulting organisations based on brand name or reputation alone, companies should define clear guidance and measurable deliverables for consulting organisations to execute.    

So then, what does it mean to have the right capability?

Building a technology capability model: Build or buy?

Understanding the business strategy is crucial for a CIO/CTO. It helps them pinpoint the right capabilities for the tech team to achieve great results. Since we won't be deep-diving into your organisation's business strategy, I propose two sets of capabilities, which will help you and your technology teams deliver the proper outcomes.

These two approaches would accommodate approaches to ‘build’ or ‘buy’ technology: 

Buying technology

When organisations buy technology platforms, both technology and business teams need the skills and training to use and test them.  Training helps team members become proficient in the purchased platform.  Platform proficiency enables the technology team to support the business to fully utilise the features of the purchased platform.

For the technology team, platform proficiency enables the technology or business team to do regular tasks such as:

• The configuration and customisation of features
• The testing of platform upgrades and integrations 
• The evaluation of features as they pertain to new business and customer functionality

In addition, technology teams can boost productivity and quality by using automation, like AI/ML, when testing new features. This helps improve productivity while avoiding errors during introduction and integration.  

To ensure that technology team members have the capabilities for the above, they need the following skills.

• Business and process analysis to capture business requirements 
• Programming language proficiency to customise/configure platforms 
• AI/ML training so that teams and individuals can take advantage of test and integration automation using modern tools. Thus, they can also train business members in the proper management of the AI bots.

When buying technology, companies need to be aware of certain risks, by asking the below questions:

• Technology is a rapidly-evolving industry, when you buy a platform - how will the technology maintain innovation to deliver continuously new features and functionality to improve business, organisational productivity and customer engagement?
• When buying a platform, is a company giving away their core intellectual property?  If you buy or outsource a technology that is the cornerstone of your operations, your strategic moat - know that they can resell such capability and operational know-how to your competitors in the near future.
• When buying a platform, is that company keeping up with security? In today's world where customer and proprietary data is constantly leaked or being lost - is the company willing to take such massive legal and reputational risk?
• Do other platforms deliver the same features and functionality? In 2025, companies across the globe talk about efficiency... selecting the right technology that is cost efficient will improve business' bottom line.  An example here is unified ERP versus separate functional modules, or a single HCM platform versus seven different point solutions.

Building technology 

When organisations seek to build platforms for custom features, agile functionality and low-cost - different capabilities and skill sets are needed among team members.  What are these capabilities and skills?

• Programming languages—Developers and engineers must know various programming languages and paradigms to quickly adjust to the evolving technological landscape while switching contexts and tasks between platforms.
• Design patterns—When building homes, you have a blueprint. This blueprint helps those doing carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work all sing from the same hymn sheet. This analogy translates to building software and utilising technology. Teams need blueprints called design patterns.
• Algorithms and AI/ML - Algorithms are the heart of modern technologies. They are the foundation for technology, business automation, and productivity. Algorithms are also the foundation for modern AI/ML models deployed for customer and business benefit.

When building technologies, you and your team should be focused on:

• Are you focused on details to minimise guessing, needless iterations between business and technology which do not add value?
• Taking advantage of modern languages and AI to ensure support and technology productivity? For example, VB.Net is now outdated and unsupported; Microsoft is prioritising modern languages like C# and F#.
• Maintaining a secure posture, testing your software for functionality and security before releasing to production.

I know this speaks against the trend, but buying or building organisations need to get the right balance between what can go right, what can go wrong and what is the cost.

Why critical thinking is the CTO’s secret weapon

The last key part of building a strong organisation is having motivated and critical-thinking people. Critical thinking helps tech groups and individuals make smarter, cost-conscious choices, allowing them to weigh the pros and cons of their tech decisions and see how today’s choices will affect the future.   

Understandably, this article challenges conventional approaches to hiring and building technology organisations; that starting with people with the right skills, right capability and motivation will bring about a more productive and secure technology organisation, one which can compete productively on the global stage.  

To close, I’ll leave all of you with the following thought:

'Even if you don’t want to compete, know that others are competing with you.' 

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Tom Tang is an industry-recognised CIO and CTO with over twenty years of experience working across multiple sectors. He was formerly the CTO of multi-channel retailer Motorpoint, CIO of Fortune 500 energy firm Alliant and has also held senior technology leadership roles at Sainsbury’s, Sears Holdings and Amazon.