One of the questions that consultants must always answer is how to win client work. Clients issue RFPs and they employ scoring criteria to select consultants. The scoring criteria are typically centered around technical competency and commercial arrangements. Clients’ procurement teams will lead the charge, score the vendors, and go through the selection processes.
Too many people are treating technology as an end. Technology, unfortunately, is just a means. We need to use technology to drive outcomes. This is why Amazon doesn’t call itself an AI company even though Amazon probably has invested more in AI than anyone else. One of the clients that I have been working with is a NEO bank start up in US. I have been helping the client develop their technology plan to support the launch of the bank. In one of our weekly check-ins with the CEO, he told me a comment that
To truly be able to deploy technology across all facets of the business, companies should explore the 7 habits of Tech-Empowered Companies and embark on a journey to transform themselves. As Marc Andreessen famously said in 2011, “software is eating the world”. Technology is becoming an essential part of every industry and every business. More and more companies are making the statement that they are becoming a technology company.
Architecture changes are hard. An MVP approach to architecture can eliminate many of the problems current architecture design faces. Instead of PowerPoint marketecture (i.e., architecture in a nice picture, as marketing brochures), an MVP for architecture would enable architects to design the key components, test the feasibility, and identify any underlying challenges. This way they don’t have to wait until late application development stages to realize the underlying architecture issues. In 2001, I was a part of the team that helped a major payment network re-engineer its mainframe based transaction process systems. Sixteen years later,
Leading companies are increasingly using annual reports to discuss their digital ambitions and their journey to become a technology empowered company. In the annual reports, they clearly articulated their technology vision, their accomplishments so far, and their future digital direction. Companies are even launching Technology Committee in their Board of Directors to further elevate technology’s positioning within their companies. As more and more companies shift towards making technology an essential part of their businesses, discussions on technology strategy will become a core part of every annual report. As technology becomes the driving force for companies
To make technology matter more, companies need to understand the underlying drivers for the magnitude of achieved technology impact. Having worked with many organizations across the world on similar topics, I have designed a formula to illustrate how to amplify the technology impact, i.e., how to make technology matter more: There are four underlying areas that will drive the magnitude of the technology impact: Application: Identify opportunities to apply technologies to external and internal products/services and business processes to create concrete business impact Adoption: Design the user desirable products and drive change management, especially with
One of the questions that consultants must always answer is how to win client work. Clients issue RFPs and they employ scoring criteria to select consultants. The scoring criteria are typically centered around technical competency and commercial arrangements. Clients’ procurement teams will lead the charge, score the vendors, and go through the selection processes.
Many companies are looking for a systematic methodology to apply technology to digitize and improve existing business processes. 4R, from Results to Root Causes to Remediation to Rhythm, is a proven way to identify process improvement opportunities, apply technology to optimize processes, and ensure impact out of the investment. Many approaches have been taken in the past to reengineer business processes. Examples would include Six Sigma’s DMAIC, Business Process Reengineering (BPR), etc. Most of these approaches were created before the arrival of the current wave of technologies, Big Data and Advanced Analytics, and agile development
While most companies still talk about business and IT alignment, the alignment between business and IT implies that business and IT are still opposite of each other. Companies are transforming themselves to become technology-empowered and make technology a core part of their business. For this transformation to work, companies should be thinking about the relationship between business and IT as the left and right sides of a human brain. Just like no one can function fully with only one side of the brain, business and IT must work together for any technology-empowered company. I had
Only 31% of companies view themselves as data driven in 2019. According to a recent McKinsey survey, only a small fraction of the value that could be unlocked by advanced-analytics approaches has been unlocked – as little as 10 percent in some sectors. This is partially driven by the fact that many companies take a field of dreams approach to data platforms – “If you build it, he will come”. To scale the impact of data analytics across the enterprise, companies should instead adopt a flywheel approach to focus on use cases and total cost
Post COVID-19, technology’s stature within companies will continue to rise. Companies will make strategic portfolio shifts and redesign its global supply chain. Working remotely will likely to stay. More investment will be made to business continuity. All these changes will add to the major digital and technology investment companies are already making to make technology an essential part of their businesses. However, companies will also likely seek more shift in IT portfolio itself to invest scarce resources in most strategic areas. Here are some predictions on how IT will likely shift post COVID-19. As Yogi
With the amount of technology advances happening today, every company must become technology-empowered. It is no longer a choice. Becoming Tech-Empowered means that companies must have accelerated metabolism, be bi-lingual with business and technology, continuously evolving products and services and underlying technology platforms, digitizing everything the company does, and experiment and learn from mistakes and failures – the ABCDE of tech-empowered companies. I recently spent some time with the CEO of a healthcare company and discussed how he thinks about technology. We discussed the concept of “tech-empowered” vs. “being a technology company”. He said that
Globally, a number of technology giants such as Amazon and Alibaba are getting into the consulting space. They are not only providing advisory services on the implementation of their hardware and software capabilities, they are also starting to become the advisers on digital strategy and digital transformation. What is driving their thinking? Is consulting the next industry the tech giants are going to disrupt? An interesting recent trend of digital transformation is that a number of technology giants are getting into strategy and management consulting. Some recent developments include: Amazon is significantly expanding its professional
Technology transformation is often similar to replacing an airplane’s jet engine while flying at 39,000 FT in the air. Past approaches to technology transformation took too long and often didn’t create immediate benefits. By the time the transformation was finished, not only the technology chosen was already obsolete again, and business was also still frustrated with the pace of technology changes. A new approach to technology transformation is required. Here are the 7 levers that will allow companies to accelerate the transformation. While digital transformation often focuses on leveraging technology to change business models, products
The 18M managers in the US, 11% of the total US workforce, can become much more productive when they are augmented by five AI assistants: Intelligent Executive Assistant, Intelligent Financial Analyst, Intelligent Coach, Intelligent HR Assistant, and Intelligent Strategy Consultant. Vendors such as X.AI, ThoughtSpot, Zoomi, and Crystal are already experimenting in those areas. As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee said, “Over the next decade, AI won’t replace managers, but managers who use AI will replace those who don’t.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that in 2018, there were 18M people in Management
The organization structure for most companies’ IT organizations hasn’t changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Most IT organizations have the following key roles reporting to the CIO…
One of the questions that consultants must always answer is how to win client work. Clients issue RFPs and they employ scoring criteria to select consultants. The scoring criteria are typically centered around technical competency and commercial arrangements. Clients’ procurement teams will lead the charge, score the vendors, and go through the selection processes.
To make technology matter more, companies need to understand the underlying drivers for the magnitude of achieved technology impact. Having worked with many organizations across the world on similar topics, I have designed a formula to illustrate how to amplify the technology impact, i.e., how to make technology matter more.
As technology becomes the driving force for companies across industries, more and more CEOs are viewing technology as a core part of their top agendas. In the meantime, many companies are still struggling to raise the profile of technology within their companies.