Strategic advice to leverage new technologies
Technology is at the heart of nearly every enterprise, enabling new business models and strategies, and serving as the catalyst to industry convergence. Leveraging the right technology can improve business outcomes, providing intelligence and insights that help you make more informed and accurate decisions. From finding patterns in data through data science, to curating relevant insights with data analytics, to the predictive abilities and innumerable applications of AI, to solving challenging business problems with ML, NLP, and knowledge graphs, technology has brought decision-making to a more intelligent level. Keep pace with the technology trends, opportunities, applications, and real-world use cases that will move your organization closer to its transformation and business goals.
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The best way forward in handling the challenge of big data application in practice is to approach it from a business rather than technology (or analytics) viewpoint. Such an approach is strategic: multidisciplinary, holistic, and with a long-term focus — something that may not always be at the forefront of issues confronting struggling businesses. Big data adoption in a strategic manner requires financial investment, senior management involvement, understanding of risks, and a certain level of process maturity in the organization. This Executive Update presents the outline of a strategic, holistic approach to big data adoption in an organization that helps overcome the current lacuna in the strategic space. This approach is based on the Big Data Framework for Agile Business (BDFAB).
AI systems (and robots) have the potential to make changes to our society that are as sweeping as those of the Industrial Revolution. Many jobs done today by people will become jobs that robots and AI can do better.
For technology-dependent products, companies, institutions, and even societies, sustainability depends on learning how to manage technical debt. Like most transformations, incorporating new practices into our organizations will likely be an iterative process. We already recognize the problem, and researchers are making progress, albeit mostly on technical issues. This Executive Update proposes a policy-centered approach to the problem. It begins with a principle that can serve as a guide for constructing technical debt management policy, and then shows how to apply that principle to develop nine recommendations that enable organizations to manage technical debt effectively.
Successive or concurrent rollout of target business operating models leads to a continuously shifting baseline for some or all business design components, thus requiring careful planning and data-driven decision making. Having a framework that baselines the state of each business design component and facilitates continuous measurement assists in executive-level decision making.
To say that blockchain (a shared, distributed, immutable ledger for recording the history of transactions) is generating a lot of attention is a huge understatement. I don't think I have seen so much excitement around a new technology since perhaps the early days of the Internet of Things (IoT) or maybe big data.
Agile methodologies, however popular they are, bring their own sets of “smells” and anti-patterns to the table, sometimes causing irreparable damage to the team. While the sources of these smells are many, one of the primary culprits is the mindset that treats Agile as “yet another methodology,” totally ignoring the cultural aspect. This article throws light on some of the prominent smells that are emerging of late in the Agile world.
Digital transformation and the new style of IT continue to evolve. How should the architecture realm then develop? More precisely, does it require us to change the way we architect solutions and interact with businesses? Are new skills required? Let’s answer these questions by considering the architecture function, discipline, and profession in that context.
With the introduction of robotic process automation (RPA) and cognitive automation (CA) tools, potential adopters of these new types of service automation tools remain skeptical about the claims surrounding their promised business value. Potential adopters want to know why organizations are adopting service automation, what outcomes they are achieving, and what are the practices that lead to achieving multiple business benefits. To answer these questions, we conducted two surveys of 143 outsourcing professionals along with interviews of 48 people, including service automation adopters, providers, and advisors. From the interviews, we identified 20 adoption journeys. This Executive Report documents the RPA “triple win” — for shareholders, customers, and employees — emerging from the successful organizations we researched. We also detail eight RPA and CA adoption cases to show how automation was carried out, and the multiple emerging benefits. Finally, we outline 20 action principles, which other organizations can enact, to deliver such outcomes.