Top 5 Techs to Budget for This Season

Let's make this part of the budgeting process a breeze. I always hated the budgeting process as a manager, so If I can help one person with this post, I'm pleased :)  Many folks will be asked to identify areas to spend the remaining 2019 budget and plan for 2020 in August. I have identified "TheTop 5 Techs" to invest in for the next 12 months. My rationale for picking these five amongst many digital technologies to invest in for the near future is the time to payback without sacrificing strategy. These five deliver quickly and can participate in strategic efforts for the medium and long term. The top techs for budgeting purposes in 2019 & 2020 are as follows:

Artificial Intelligence:

AI allows you to start small and grow successes into strategic wins. Most organizations have tried small machine learning projects that focus on data-oriented problem domains. It is time for those organizations to up their investment to create more momentum for AI to augment human activity while replacing error-prone of drudgery work. Most of the short term benefits are around automation, but better customer experiences are emerging too. The leaders will be looking to leverage AI for competitive advantage and reasoning applications of AI to assist human resources. Fast followers will deepen investments in more data-focused applications. Followers will now jump into the fray and try some form of AI soon as the window for early advantage is closing. Please click here for the typical types of AI or click here for AI problem domains explained.


Customer Journey Mapping:

Knowing the customer's real journey is essential and customer journey technologies are getting significant investment today. Most are related to monitoring and mining the real experience with today's web pages, processes or systems, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. While this gives some ideas where the friction points can be improved for a better experience, this is not enough to declare victory. Real journey mapping considers the journey from a customers perspective that may go beyond the four walls of your organization. Mapping capabilities that go beyond mined data for owned processes and applications to touchpoints necessary for understanding, documenting and training all the resources that touch customers during their real journey. Leaders are going for total customer excellence that considers the customer experiences in context. Fast followers are going beyond mining to include modeling. Followers will jump into mining. Please click here to understand CJM approaches or click here to understand CJM technology.

Low Code:

Low code approaches generally allow for faster development and testing of code. Low code can be applied to testing out business or technological solutions in a "time to market" fashion that is consistent with digital results. It can also be applied to quickly converting code from existing burning platforms, applications and processes to speed up digital transformations. Leaders are trying new business models plus approaches with low code tech. Fast followers are leveraging low code for productivity mostly. Followers are fast being enticed to deliver with low code tech. Please click here for leveraging low code for creative solutions or click here for successful low code approaches.

Robotic Process Automation(RPA):

RPA is being actively used to automate eliminate drudgery work like keying, logging onto multiple systems, integrating data from diverse systems, and creating straight-through processes. Today bots are created to eliminate tasks or drive sequences of activity while reducing human intervention. This allows workers to focus on delivering results like better customer interactions. Leaders are combining process with RPA, RPA with AI or low code with RPA to extend the benefits of RPA. Fast followers are inspecting their current processes and applications with mining tools to look for more automation opportunities. Followers are jumping on the bandwagon for task automation. Please click here for the power of RPA and process or click here to find the future of RPA.

Workflow / BPM:

Processes often orchestrate the work sequences of work tasks, resources and the tapping of content/data. Managing work in processes sequences, small or large has been a large contributor for decades for large scoped industrial processes. Today organizations are discovering that these kind of processes are less than 20% of the hidden processes through their departments and organizational groups. Thus workflow has taken off fast to create form-driven, case collaboration or small departmental flows. Leading organizations will reach for larger scoped processes that follow the real customer journeys even if they are following multiple supply or value chains. Fast followers are leveraging processes everywhere. Followers are just discovering the power of workflow. Please click here to learn the role of processes in the digital age or click here to understand the interaction of process and IoT.

Net; Net:

These are my top five amongst many others including blockchain, content/collaboration, IoT, analytics, unified communications, process mining, chat-bots, architecture tools, digital twins, cloud computing, augmented reality, big/fast data, 3D printing, and nanotech. You can run with these five and deliver short term benefits to build upon. You can even combine these into powerful combinations. Please click here for some potential combinations.