What is the ROI of having a Chief Digital Officer (CDO)?
I have a question: can you point me to any info/articles showing the ROI for large (ideally global) companies having a Chief Digital Officer? ROI could be increased revenues or profits of course, or even NPS or other qualitative metric.
One of my MBA students is researching this and I immediately thought of you! Any help greatly appreciated! (By the way, I read your article analysing the ROI for Digital firms with much interest, but this is slightly different. Pitfalls of having a CDO also important too of course..)
Starbucks may be our answer
Adam Brotman is Starbuck’s CDO and I think he provides great evidence for the good results that CDOs can produce (see more on this at Econsultancy).
To take a better look we need to compare Starbucks’ ROI against some competitors. In this case I’ve chosen a selection of US cafe and restaurant chains:

Interestingly the only firm with a better ROI is Domino’s (see more on omnichannel pizza) who have a US nominated CDO (Dennis Maloney) and an Australian one too (Michael Gillespie). Both Domino’s and Starbucks are well ahead of the average ROI in this case.
I wouldn’t conclude from this limited exercise that having a CDO gives a better ROI but I do think it provides a starting point to find a list of public firms with a CDO and compare the ROI (and potentially other measures) to provide more evidence. Google Finance can easily be used to get data on ROI.
List of further articles on the topic of CDOs (although none quite answering your specific requirements):
- Gartner Says Every Budget is Becoming an IT Budget (David Willis – Gartner, 2012)
- Why a Chief Digital Officer is a bad idea (Ashley Friedlin – Econsultancy, 2013)
- Number of Chief Digital Officers Doubled in 2013; (David Mathison – CDO Club, 2014)
- I do not believe in chief digital officers,’ says EE’s outgoing digital head (Matthew Chapman – Marketing Magazine, 2014)
- When Does A Chief Digital Officer Signal Weakness? (Dan Woods – Forbes, 2014)
- The Market for Chief Digital Officers Heats Up (Tim Bourgeois – Chief Digital Officer, 2014)
- Why CIOs May Morph Into the Chief Digital Officer (Irving Wladawsky-Berger – Wall Street Journal, 2012)
- A CMO, a CIO, and a chief digital officer walk into a bar… (Scott Brinker – Chief Mar Tec, 2013)
- Britain’s boardrooms suffering from ‘digital deficit’ (Sophie Curtis – The Telegraph, 2013)
- Why the Chief Digital Officer Role Is on the Rise (Rich Hein – CIO, 2013)
- Is 2014 the Year of the Chief Digital Officer? (Prophet Chan Suh – Wired, 2014)
- The chief digital officer role is dead – good riddance (Lara O’Reilly – Marketing Week, 2014)
- Chief digital officers have the toughest jobs of all (Paul Randle – The Guardian, 2014)
- How The CMO And CIO Will Determine The Future Of Business In 2015 (Cliff Condon – Forrester, 2014)
- The Rise of the Chief Digital Officer (Rhys Grossman – Russell Reynolds Associates, 2011)
- Do You Have the Digital Leaders You Need? (Jeffrey F. Rayport and Tuck Rickards – HBR, 2012)
- Do Chief Digital Officers Spell Trouble for CIOs? (Kim S Nash – CIO, 2013)
- Starbucks makes management shuffle amid new digital push (BBC – BBC, 2014)
- The Path From CIO To Chief Digital Officer: How To Make It Happen (Robert Berkman – CDO Club, 2014)
- The rise of the chief digital officer (Steve Grout – The Guardian, 2014)
- What Does A CDO Do Anyway? (Rachel Kauffman – Media Bistro, 2011)
- ‘Chief Digital Officer’ is the next hot executive title, says Gartner (Tim Conneally – Beta News, 2012)
- Gartner: Do you have a Chief Digital Officer? You’re gonna need one (Michael Cooney – Network World, 2012)
- 8 key duties of the chief digital officer (Joe McKendrick – ZD Net, 2013)
If you have a question on digital strategy and transformation, send it to me through the contact page.