In 2018, some of the core areas of focus for technology leaders spanned infusing emerging technology, product improvisations, enhancing user experience, and operational cost and improvisation. The pressure was consistent for all organizations irrespective of their size, on adapting rapidly to changing consumer demands, processes, and standards.
As 2019 progresses, it is time for technology leaders to put together their list of focus areas that can have a direct impact on the core business. No matter how small or big the transformations are – what would be critical is how it impacts customer experience and business performance.
The latest forecast by Gartner projects the IT spending to total $3.76 trillion in 2019, globally – which is an increase of 3.2 percent from 2018. IT is no more limited to being a platform to run a business but the core that runs the business efficiently (Gartner, 2019). Thus the job of IT leaders on focusing the IT spending judiciously becomes all the more relevant.
“By 2020, worldwide spending on technologies, and services that will enable the digital transformation of business practices, products, and organizations will reach $1.97 trillion.”
– IDC
Here are some core areas that IT leaders should be focusing on in 2019 –
Whether its customer experience or organization operations. Identifying weak systems that are too large to handle need to be replaced with secured, and agile systems. Data and systems not only face threats from hackers or organized criminals but it’s larger bodies that pose the biggest threats. Many countries have already been associated with cyber-crimes against the US. Just investing in tools are no longer a guarantee to protect from such hacks. Open source operating systems like Linux have been known for decades for their ability to offer secured and customizable systems.
As a technology leader, there is absolutely no way that you can ignore bringing in a digital transformation within the organization itself – before introducing it for user experience. The scope of IT shouldn’t be limited to simply managing the IT systems, or offer IT solutions to customers. The focus on permeating digitization into other teams and departments like supply chain, operations, legal, human resources shouldn’t be ignored – which could substantially improve the overall organization’s enhancement. Whether it’s automating supply chain, implementing blockchain technology in contract management, or introducing robotic process automation to manage the database – organizations simply cannot stay behind with upgrading to a digitized operational system.
In a study by Korn Ferry, 60% of the growth leaders surveyed in the US recognized that talent crunch is predicted to affect technology transformation in organizations. While on one hand digitization is foreseen to make some roles obsolete, but on the other hand, it will increase the demand for highly skilled workers in the tech space. The tech gap to drive digital transformation means – the dedicated focus on retaining highly skilled workers. Finding new employees, and training them can increase the cost, and the onboarding can be an uphill task. Talent retention programs, and partnering with IT talent sourcing firms to find highly skilled IT talents to back up the shortage, could be an answer to address the situation.
What is common among all of the above focus, is the way emerging technology is going to drive organizational growth – be it talent or technical growth. The need of the hour is to align the business goals with technology seamlessly where the two aspects of are no more at two ends but rather working cohesively to improvise operations, processes and systems with the right set of people driving the efforts.
