Strategic advice to leverage new technologies

In this Executive Update, the last of three related Updates, we evaluate how financial organizations are responding to the new challenges of cloud outsourcing and continue to distill our findings based on research and data collection conducted from 2014-2016. Using insight from our interviewees, we share some action points through a framework that enables organizations to manage this increasingly complex, crucial area. We also outline some good practices for managing cloud-based innovation on a continuing basis in order to maintain daily compliance. 

In this on-demand webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Paul Harmon considers the growing role of artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies in all aspects of business. He argues that cognitive technologies will simply extend the ongoing digital transformation requiring that companies reconsider their business models and processes yet again and that they will need to incorporate intelligent elements to remain competitive.

The IoT is rich with opportunity — and risk. Designers must proactively consider the privacy implications of the design choices they make. Designs should help people make intelligent, rational decisions about their interactions with sensors and devices, not obfuscate those decisions. When the benefits appear to outweigh the risks, society as a whole should be informed, educated, and engaged to develop appropriate social norms to be followed.

The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to garner considerable attention as companies announce they are developing new connected products and services. Of course, this brings up the important topic of to what extent organizations are maintaining sensitive data in IoT devices, platforms, and applications.

Apart from consumer adoption of digital technologies, startups are also disrupting the status quo of traditional organizations. To address the threats and capitalize on the opportunities, organizations are transforming themselves to enable digital capabilities to improve customer experience and offer analytics-driven personalized products, services, and collaborative innovations, leading to increased top lines and margins. 

Our research and consulting reveal that CEOs and their CxO colleagues play a pivotal role in determining whether or not their organizations exploit the innovative opportunities provided by digital technologies. Creating and sustaining value from digital investments requires the CEO’s focused attention and oversight. CEOs set the tone, and their active participation determines whether their organizations optimize a return from any spending on IT. Most CEOs don’t seem to understand this or quite know what they should do. 

Today, when everybody wants to disrupt their own or somebody else’s business, and new technologies that let them do it seem to appear almost daily, people with the “capacity to lead” are critical, and nowhere more than in the exploitation of IT. Obvious though this is, recognizing, empowering, and sustaining good IT leaders has been a challenge. People who can think strategically about what, why, and how to deploy technology but have trouble delivering it — and the reverse — fall short as IT leaders. Both skills are needed, and this edition of Cutter Business Technology Journal covers them in great depth.

As the amount of data generated by personal devices increases, supported by the trend of making these devices more personal (i.e., wearable, sewable), so too will the risks of personal privacy violation rise. From the technological perspective, it is important to follow privacy-by-design approaches, incorporating both data encryption and data anonymization techniques. From the perspective of enterprises and users, understanding that “wearing means sharing” is a valuable first step.