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.
Insight
The reality of today's highly competitive and customer-demand-centric market conditions have pushed software (solution) delivery organizations beyond the traditionally accepted limits of software development and delivery capabilities. There is no argument that Lean methodologies such as Lean Six Sigma and DevOps can help improve operational solution delivery capacities through:
The new buzzword for measures for improvement is "analytics." Unfortunately, there is no new thinking to go along with the new name. Many leaders still go about getting, analyzing, and using measures in the wrong way. Rather than being the "leader," they fall back into the role of doer. It's a fascinating phenomenon.
Carla Ogunrinde writes, "if we can summon the will to take a giant step into this evolutionary moment, using empathy as the gateway, we can become boardroom luminaries who create meaningful and enduring solutions."
THE INADEQUACY OF TRADITIONAL BEST PRACTICE
I worked for several years as a consultant to investment banks, helping them build or evaluate software systems to support traders, salespeople, and operations staff. During these experiences, one question in particular came to intrigue me.
THE NEW EXPECTATION IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
The explosion of connected devices has set a new standard in consumer expectations, in that the "standard" is a moving target. Everything is connected, everything is digital, and everything is real time. There is no tolerance in the market for a company that produces great products but offers a poor service experience around that product or vice versa. The experience with your firm's products and services must be at least as good as the best experience a consumer has ever had with anyone else.
BUILDING BETTER SOLUTIONS: WHAT'S NEEDED?
There are many reasons why software applications and systems are often rejected by the users they are intended to support. In some cases, the users are not involved early in the development of the requirements. In other cases, IT puts forward technical features it thinks the application should support, with little knowledge of what the business really needs.
