Post No.1- Emerging
technologies Themes
The previous blog focused on how developing an EA practice that is
business-outcome based is a practical approach in today’s business environment.
It allows business to make quick wins by capitalizing on relevant business
disruptions.
Technology is growing at an exponential rate. Gartner’s Top 10
Strategic Technology Trends for 2017 shows us that we are heading towards a
radical, long-term (2020 to 2025) evolution of the user experience for both
customers and employees. EA experts and technology innovation leaders must
support their organizations to positively respond to the disruptive technology
trends to stay competitive and differentiate themselves.
Gartner suggests that the top 10 strategic technology trends fall
under these three themes:
- The intelligent theme
- The digital theme
- The mesh theme
The intelligent theme features trends like Artificial Intelligence
(AI), machine learning, intelligent apps and intelligent things. AI and machine
learning can be useful in scenarios involving productivity and accuracy.
Possible AI applications in banking are Enhanced Customer Personalization and Fraud
Detection. The retail industry can use AI to build propensity-to-buy models.
Intelligent apps are rapidly maturing such as virtual personal assistants,
virtual customer assistants and virtual financial advisers. The world's largest
companies will exploit intelligent apps along with big data and analytical
tools to refine their offerings and improve their customer experience. Business
is also expected to continue to seek opportunities to use robotics in
automating their current manual tasks.
The digital theme revolves around blending the digital and
physical worlds. Some of the growing trends in this theme is Virtual Reality
and Augmented Reality. These are used by
organizations to create a simulated environment that can be used to enhance the
design and manufacturing processes. Digital Twins-which are dynamic software
models of a physical systems- are used by the business to study systems, their
applications can vary from high-value assets optimization to enhanced products
development. Blockchain technologies, such as Bitcoin, facilitates secure
online transactions across many computers in such a way that the registered
transactions cannot be altered retroactively. It has numerous possible business
use cases that can radically transform economic interactions once it get
properly regulated.
The mesh theme is about exploiting connections between an
expanding set of people and businesses, as well as devices, content and services,
to deliver digital business outcomes. New input/output mechanisms will emerge
using audio, video, touch, taste, smell and other sensory channels, such as
radar, which will enable people to communicate with systems, and systems to
communicate with people. This can open the door to many new digital business
opportunities. Platforms such as the IoT
platform, Information system platform, Customer experience platform, Analytics
and intelligence platform and Business ecosystem platform can be used together
to provide an interoperable set of services that can be brought together to
create applications, apps and services.
These technological trends are expected to change the business
world entirely, therefore organizations must carefully evaluate which one to
track and adopt.
You can find Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2017
in this link: https://www.gartner.com/document/3471559?ref=solrAll&refval=183575405&qid=2fec14f62d1620bf52c1d3
Post No.2- Assessing
Key Technological Trends
In the previous post, we found out that there are too many disturbing
technologies that will affect the business world. This will leave EA experts
and technology leaders challenged to determine which technology trends might
have the greatest impact on their organizations business models.
Gartner suggests that EA professionals should start by assessing
the potential Impact of a trend specifically on four key areas:
- The Human Experience: Analyze the needs, wants, desires and pain of individuals, and the different customer types and their interactions with the technology.
- The Business Experience: Study which initiatives based on the trend affect business operations. Are there any opportunities to reduce expenses or improve operational efficiency?
- The IT Experience: Determine if the current capabilities are ready and mature enough to take advantage of upcoming technology trends.
- The Technology Market Experience: Study the opportunities and threats that is brought by the trend to the technology market.
Then EA professionals should evaluate the degree of maturity of
the trend, understand its position as an emerging, growth or mainstream trend.
The maturity of the trend determines the way on which the organization can respond
to it. Trends that are rapidly changing and evolving require more focus because
its underlying technology is changing. Trends that are offering practical
solutions to help organizations take advantage of, should be
considered.
The trend’s market dynamic should also be evaluated by EA professionals, questions such as what is the level of market interest the degree to which the trend is incorporated
in strategical and tactical plans of other organizations, should be asked. Some risk taking organizations
decide to start experimenting with a technology whenever potential use cases
are validated. Others prefer to wait and watch how the trend is exploited by
other business to learn from them.
Now that EA professionals are equipped with the all the needed
information about a specific trend, they should start to study how this trend
is relevant to their enterprise context, mainly in terms of its business
model and strategy. They may recommend
to the management that they should ignore the trend, monitor it whether periodically,
actively or aggressively, or they may recommend adopting it.
From there, business outcomes that support the approved list of
trends should be identified and defined, accompanied with a set of business
scenarios that the trend could address. Opportunities and risks should then be evaluated
before finally creating a transformation roadmap.
You can find more about Gartner’s approach to identify the technology
trends that organizations need to track in this link:
Post No.3- Designing
Innovation Centers
In this era of innovation, where business has either “to differentiate
or die”, many organizations are establishing innovation centers to deliver both
creative exploration and business value. In this post, I am highlighting the seven
best practices to create an innovation center as suggested by Gartner.
The first recommended practice is to determine the goals for the
innovation center. These goals are usually revolving around the innovation
projects that the center will target, the relationships that the center will pursue
with institutions and other hubs and the use of the center physical space.
Another recommended practice is to select the center’s location
based on access to talent and ecosystems. However, organizations should beware
of failing to retain its key talent in a highly competitive geography. At the
same time, they should make the trade-off between keeping the center close to strategic
decision-making power and away from the rest of the organization that can
affect the progress and the culture of the center.
Gartner also suggests that organizations should ensure the center’s
funding, staffing and resources match the ambitions. The nature of partnerships
that the center should seek, the number of the staff and their talents range
should all be carefully determined.
Centers should also focus programs on areas of opportunity and
growth that require central attention such as high-benefit, high-risk
opportunities, emerging topics that benefit multiple areas of the organization
and new processes and cultural norms.
An important best practice is to design the center’s activities to
span the innovation process. The center’s scope should not be limited to proving
out the idea or technology but they should go all the way until it is transferred
to the line of business.
The sixth best practice involves clarifying relationships to
internal and external partners. Internal relationships includes handing over
ideas to other parts of the business, solve challenging problems requested by
business executives and acting as a center of excellence. External relationships include
partnerships with universities, investment companies, incubators, startups, government
and industry bodies, while keeping a close eye on intellectual property issues.
The last best practice is to develop metrics to measure
qualitative as well as quantitative outcomes for creativity and business value.
Gartner recommends using a mix of objective and subjective metrics beyond the
ROI because the results of innovation are often hard to know in advance.
The link below is an article that includes more information on the
topic, it also includes links to some useful case studies:
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