The ability to combine will be a core pillar of the business strategy. By 2023, organizations that have adopted a hybrid approach will outperform their competitors by 80% in speed of new feature deployment, research has determined. seven digital business transformation trends for 2023 and more.
Drivers for composable architectures are based on organizations investing in holistic experience strategies. To drive innovation, these organizations must attract the right people, which is becoming increasingly difficult in this scarce talent landscape.
Research reveals that many senior IT leaders are now judged on employee experience (46%), almost as high as customer experience (48%).
By 2023, more and more leading organizations will see the total experience (TX) as a means to improve both customer and employee journeys, especially in the areas where they intersect.
This strategy will create superior shared experiences and drive additional business value by repurposing existing technology investments that underpin employee experience initiatives. key members and customers.
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By 2026, Gartner predicts that 60% of large enterprises will use TX to transform their business model to achieve “world-class customer and employee mobility.” By 2024, organizations that deliver an overall experience will outperform competitors by 25% on satisfaction metrics for both CX and EX.
Research shows that to deliver a highly overall experience, improved collaboration processes between IT and business teams are needed. IT is no longer just a technology enabler; IT now solves business-critical problems, addresses key business goals, and helps develop a competitive advantage with technology. This shift requires business and IT teams to work more closely together to achieve strategic goals. However, 98% of IT leaders think that the workflow between the IT team and the business can be improved.
The data needed to create a seamless digital experience often reside on multiple systems. The average organization currently uses 976 different applications, but many of these systems are poorly connected. The same study found that the resulting data silos are a barrier to creating integrated user experiences for 90% of organizations.
The main driver for improving the entire experience will be your company’s technology systems. Process improvement is a top priority for IT leaders. These process improvements start with understanding the tools available to deliver the best results with the optimal dollar and time investment. Forty-six percent of senior IT leaders say process improvement is a key priority for their organization over the next 12 months — with many reporting that their current processes are hindering progress. degree. This push to improve processes is particularly prevalent in the media, media and technology industry (60%), as well as the public sector (52%).
Businesses are scrutinizing costs more than ever, and often the biggest expense a company incurs is through its technology systems. With ever-changing employee numbers and growing customer bases, companies often allow employees to adopt new technology in a decentralized fashion. This can solve their immediate problem, but often doesn’t align with the overall strategy and eventually leads to skyrocketing (and redundant) technology spending. A quick way to identify these costs is through an application streamlining audit.
This vetting process can involve multiple departments and will positively impact the bottom line from both a cost and efficiency perspective if you know how and where to look for overlapping systems and technologies. It will even make your organization safer. 2022 CIO . research shows that IT is leaning more towards existing investments than buying new technology — most IT leaders (72%) prefer to update or upgrade existing solutions whenever possible is to replace them. With growing economic hardships, many organizations are looking to extract more value from their existing infrastructure rather than investing in entirely new technology.
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Here’s a three-point plan on how you can do this type of testing quickly and efficiently in the new year, but first let’s define what application streamlining is all about. ChatGPT:
Business application rationalization is the process of assessing the use and value of business applications within an organization, with the goal of optimizing the use of these applications to support business. This may involve identifying and removing unnecessary or underused applications, consolidating or standardizing certain applications, and ensuring that the remaining applications are used efficiently. and effective to support business. The goal of business application streamlining is to improve the overall performance and efficiency of the organization by reducing complexity and eliminating redundant or unnecessary systems.
1. Start with your critical systems
Diving into this exercise may seem overwhelming at first, which is why I recommend breaking this exercise down into three components — Critical System, Medium, and Overdrive. Start with the foundational systems your business relies on every day. Gain insight into what’s integrated and why, and make these systems the foundation of your audit.
Once you have a list of three or four systems (maybe more depending on the complexity of your business), talk to the different departments to see which apps they use, and why. and what functionality they provide. Most likely there will be some overlap between the critical systems and the tools they use on a weekly basis.
Finally, check out the Extras — small purchases that different departments and employees have made over the years often stop getting acquainted because they can’t integrate or have become obsolete/outdated after another tool is purchased to replace it. The full list of these can be difficult to follow, so get your IT team to assist.
2. Know your contract terms
For most small and medium sized companies, keeping track of supplier contracts in a spreadsheet is simple enough. Looking at the overall list, seeing the dates of contracts and the total cost of each contract can give you a quick overview of your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Once you have an overview of TCO, it’s time to list the functionality and identify the problem each tool is solving. And once you have a framework for what tools are doing what, you can call your key technology partners for additional guidance and support.
3. Contact your key and strategic technology partners
It’s no surprise that most major tech companies are constantly improving their products, developing new features, and adding functionality by acquiring other companies. Why is this problem? Because as a busy executive you may not realize how many features you have in your current subscriptions (especially the important ones) and sometimes businesses are paying for it. too much money for duplicate technologies.
Setting up a simple contract review with your strategic partners can often uncover features you didn’t know you had, allowing you to eliminate the tools (and costs) that do the job. similar ability. This often results in lower TCO and increased employee efficiency as it reduces the “spinning chair” effect (juggling multiple tools to retrieve customer cases, data, insights, etc.).
Conclusion
IT is now measured by productivity, cost reduction, and experience. About half of senior IT leaders are now judged on employee productivity (52%), cost reduction and optimization (50%), customer (48%) and employee experience (forty six%). This varies across industries; For example, for financial services and insurance, 62% of senior IT leaders are rated on employee productivity. IT is also burdened with backlog projects. Three-quarters (74%) of respondents said project backlogs are preventing them from implementing strategic initiatives. To overcome these challenges, organizations need to leverage APIs, automation, and low-cost/free tools to create a connected experience between customers and employees.
There are no IT projects, only business projects. What apps are helping your company achieve business results? Which business projects need more investment and which can be done with less capital? To better understand business needs and desired outcomes, one must consider application streamlining audits, mapping applications to project requirements so you can determine spend and energy levels. wasted quantity. This process is a team sport and it can be done effectively.
Taking the time to test your technology stack doesn’t have to take hours. If you follow this framework and empower the heads of your business units to make a list of the technologies they use every day, you can have a clear understanding of all the applications used within a few days. day. App testing is a great way to start the year clean, gain insight into your tech stack, and streamline both savings and efficiency.
This article is co-authored by Brian FerraraSenior account executive for tech at Sales force
