What Did Folks Read in 2024?

2024 was a year of AI discovery. The goal was to prove that AI could help businesses, so many proof-of-concept projects and pilots were conducted in organizations. The hope was that AI could enhance or accelerate the digital business movement. Most proof-of-concept projects proved valuable, so baking AI into digital business efforts became a reality for the future. As generative AI took the spotlight, there was a scurry in using AI to create content and code. This was a significant shift from 2023, when AI was nascent and emphasized digital processes. Customer Journey topics consistently fall behind AI and Digital in aggregate. 

                      2024 Twelve-Month Sinur Blog Activity

In 2024, countries other than the US and China focused on Northern Europe activity, where embracing new technologies occurs first. This trend has been consistent year after year since I first published my blog in 2013 and has been evident in well over a million hits. 

     2024 Activity by Country Other Than the US & China

What Have People Been Reading in the 1st Quarter 2024?

 AI and Customer Journey topics will continue to gain momentum in 2024, and it is no surprise that AI topics are racing forward, led by Generative AI. What is surprising is the interest in the basics of Digital Transformation and Results-oriented Communications, aka goal-directed collaboration. There is the usual hunger for trends in business and technology in the new year as people orient themselves and recalibrate goals. There is consistent demand for Digitial Business Platforms (DBP). Another new trend is the re-emergence of old topics combined with AI, including Business Processes and RPA. There was quite a mixture of issues and a significant increase in reading momentum. Most of the increase comes from the U.S., Nordic Countries, and Asia.

Top 5 Technology Trends for 2024

Last week, I published the Top 5 Business Trends for 2024 (click here), and this week, I narrowed down several technology trends to my top 5 that organizations need to start responding to intensely in 2024.

Harnessing Usable AI

Most organizations will probably have some form of the many types of AI in progress. Progress could range from experimentation to production-enabled and active in several business and technology domains. Since organizations do not fear another AI Winter because of broad-based data-driven successes, they are looking to take advantage of various kinds of AI (click here for AI Tributaries and Types for 2024). Significant efforts in and around Natural Language Processing (NLP) will allow for human understanding and appropriate responses like generating human-like interfaces in chatbots and language translation services, for example. There will be more virtual assistants that will supercharge customers and employees to be more effective even beyond their inherent knowledge and skill levels. It will expand AI to voice, image, and video analysis to create a more inclusive context for decisions and actions for carbon-based participants and robotic assistants. There will be an emphasis on emotion recognition to deal with the human factors of doing business. This new capability and power will need to be protected, so intelligent cybersecurity will get a boost to detect and prevent threats leveraging AI. Expect organizations to use AI until governance issues become the focus.

Leveraging Intelligent Customer Experiences and Processes/Applications

Organizations will likely start switching from flow-directed approaches to goal-directed ones where the flow is based on the changing goals of a customer journey or process. Savvy organizations will include their goals with the goals of customers, partners, and employees in the goal-directed approaches and balance seemingly conflicting objectives in a balanced approach. Personalization will now consider goals and measure feedback through real-time observation and analysis. Of course, better user experiences and omni-channel experiences will continue as table stakes, but more will be demanded. User-centered design employing more gamification components will play a role as AI and algorithms will expand their reach to customers, employees, and partners to advance Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Human/ tech collaboration will get a fresh look, including new forms of augmented reality over time. Continuous improvement and aggressive automation will continue in times of stability; however, changing conditions may unhinge current optimization patterns. Intelligence will be used to adapt processes and user experiences more acceleratedly. Organizations will leverage predictive methods and more aggressive scenario management and monitoring. It will be a necessity with supply chain shifts and optimization particularly.

Moving to Convergent Business and Technology Platforms

While individual technology stacks bring benefits, costs, and challenges, organizations will eagerly watch for the convergence of focused functionality into platforms that more easily integrate technology functions to enable faster and cheaper business results. Desire will force broader technology options at a more affordable cost and potential mergers and buyouts. Convergence will create aggregated specialty platforms and generalized digital business platforms. The effect is fewer vendors to manage for organizations and more integrated business/technical functionality. Examples include generalized Digital Business Platforms (DBP), Business Application/Package Platforms, Sales/Customer Platforms, Process Platforms, Collaboration Platforms, Data Science/Analytic Platforms, Automation Platforms, Lowcode Platforms, Cloud Platforms, Data Mesh Platforms, and Security Platforms. For a quick overview of the players, click here. I expect AI platforms to emerge as success is experienced and integration becomes necessary.

Building on Intelligent Infrastructure

As all business-driven intelligence and agility become a competitive weapon, the need for intelligent infrastructure will emerge quickly. It means that the infrastructure players that leverage AI and analytics in either a reactive or proactive manner will flourish. It will create a race to intelligence under the covers of processes, systems, and applications. Edge computing and IoT integration are perfect examples of where putting intelligence at the edge or even outside of a business process will be necessary. First, it will be monitored soon after there will be recognition of the need for decisions close to the edge and intelligent actions to deal with the changing conditions. Eventually, AI-driven intelligent bots or agents will be brokering response patterns at the edge. Examples of success today would include Smart Cities infrastructure. Digital twins will flourish in intelligent infrastructure, leveraging clever hybrid and multi-cloud along with smart data meshes. All of this will require smart security that is blockchain-enabled. In the future, quantum computing exploration will keep a watchful eye on the swarms of agile AI bots responding to infrastructure and business needs.

Living with Governed Leverage with Sustainability

Like it or not, organizations will have to balance their business results with the trail of impact their business activities create. There will be the emergence of renewable energy integration where it makes sense. Recycling or recreation will be more emphasized in 2024, along with eco-friendly packaging solutions. Smart buildings that leverage AI for energy efficiency optimize energy consumption in many aspects of an organization's activities. Remote work will play a role in the delicate balance of progress and preservation. Technology will be essential in an organization's ability to measure, monitor, and reduce its carbon footprint over its complete operation as and its supply chain. Water management is becoming a vital resource to monitor and optimize, leveraging tech and advanced waste management technology and techniques.

What Have People Been Reading in 2023?

 Another year of posting blogs for me. Though the frequency of posting new blogs has gone down, the activity has been ramping up. The number of hits is north of 900K; I expect to hit nearly a million this year.  As you might guess, AI is getting a lot of attention as well as Customer Journeys. The surprises were previously popular topics, such as digital business platforms (DBP).  The one topic that shows maturity in applying digital is the interest in coping with legacy while progressing with digital and now AI. The interest in RPA tanked, and the interest in processes resurged. The topic of ransomware also came on strong as the vulnerabilities that more digital brings interest to the bad actors. There has been a shift in offshore interest to Asia and Northern Europe. It will be fun in 2024 to predict business and technical trends. I will take a shot at that in February. Meanwhile, here are a couple of graphs to help you see what happened last year and the last quarter. Enjoy. Click on the graphic if you want to see a bigger version. If there is a topic you think I should address, please post a comment or hit me up on LinkedIn. 

Thankful for 10 Great Years

 I've been pretty good about letting folks know what seems to be getting read quarterly and annually on this blog. While I have the last 90-day summary included in this post, I also did an inception-to-date analysis to see what topics hit a home run for my typical audience, including business types and technical types. Before I dive into the charts as usual, I wanted to thank my loyal readers and say this blog experiment has turned out well. After I retired from full-time work with Gartner, I thought I still had more to give. While Garter was a great experience, the blog allowed me to explore topics that would not get past management and editor oversight. Grammarly and my dear wife, Sherry, guided me along the way. Sherry had a strong Digital career retiring from IBM in 2005, and was a great manager. 

The blog is now approaching 830K reads over 645 posts. It has been read from 30+ countries regularly. My one true hope is that I helped peeps in their everyday job and just maybe got them to think a little differently. I received many comments and participated in some really nice conversations with readers. Here are the most popular topics on the blog of all time. Customer Journeys, Automation (RPA), Real-Time Dashboards, AI, Digital Business Platforms (DBP), Process Modeling, and Trends. Besides the US and Russia, Europe dominated the readership over the last 10 years. 

                                MOST POPULAR BLOG POSTS OVER 10 YEARS

                       THE MOST ACTIVE COUNTRIES BESIDES US & RUSSIA

                                                          LAST 90 DAYS

 

2023 Top 5 Technical Trends

Organizations will focus on assured success in 2023. Organizations will focus less on "moon shots" and more on accurately hitting targets on earth. While the allure of new digital solutions and the temptation of true transformation will still seem to call, organizations will stick with the attainable. It does not mean that organizations will not innovate; the innovation will be undertaken with wisdom while staying congruent with the Top 5 Business Trends in 2023. (Click here for more information). Part of that wisdom will also be keeping an eye for emergent business opportunities and technologies that could be of advantage or threats that derail focused efforts that are highly synched to the stakeholders and executive directions. Organizations will double down on successful technologies that enhance the bottom line while keeping a watchful eye for technical innovation that makes sense within risk tolerances.

Real-Time Observability

All aspects of business are speeding up and have to deal with emerging conditions, patterns, opportunities, and threats. It will put a premium on real-time observation, decisions, and actions. Some of these real-time decisions and activities will be made on the edge more autonomously within management and governance guard rails, sometimes called constraints. Managers will make more integrative decisions requiring more detailed data, often sifted and enhanced by AI, and need a lateral view that looks for the implications in multiple contexts. It will drive two significant activities over and above the resurgent analytic sectors. One is integrated emerging visibility that looks across and outside the organization. Often there will be integrated monitoring or a management cockpit that will visualize results, notify managers of significant detections, and allow them to try different alternatives leveraging prediction, simulation, and various analytical modeling to take appropriate and quick action. The simple decisions will get automated, and autopilot actions will be suggested or enacted even at the edge. The other is establishing, growing, and managing a data mesh. All of this depends entirely on having an intelligent data mesh that knows where the data is and the quality of said data regardless of data type (operational databases, behavioral data, voice, or video), no matter where it resides. This huge vacuum is being filled as we speak with emergent and new data management software that catalog and reach into various sources (cloud or not), notifying the manager of the data quality scores.

Intelligent Automation

All the focus on hyper-automation is starting to pay off. Organizations are getting substantial benefits from newer automation approaches. Consequently, there will be additional bets on combinations of technologies that deliver the best returns. These returns will contribute to the bottom line for current earnings and help fund any new tech efforts that management deems essential to compete. The silo technologies coming together to deliver great automation include process/workflow, RPA, Process/Data mining, Business Lead, Low Code, Monitoring, Simulation, Mapping, and Analytics. There are a variety of combinations that have compelling case studies, and many organizations have had significant successes. A portfolio of initiatives that deliver savings and opportunities to support business directives is a must for 2023. A platform of integrated technologies is a big help in providing the benefits of technical combinations. Click here to see example combinations and vendors that have proven successful as a Digital Business Platform (DBP)

AI Expanding and Adapting Its Role

Ai has proven its value in learning from data, which will continue to gather steam focused on and around desired business outcomes. When combined with analytic and statistical models, AI can move into more thinking situations on top of the already important detection and pattern recognition duties AI is known for today. The data sources for detection mining will expand beyond traditional data to include images, videos, voice, and communications. The kind of thinking situations AI can move into in the short term would consist of knowledge acquisition/leverage, modeling, projections, and autonomous actions in emergent situations. Conversational and explainable AI will make substantial headway in 2023, building on existing success. A new movement in AI will revolve around intelligent chatbots, smart automation bots, new forms of deep learning and pattern recognition, plus intelligent applications. AI will also assist the creatives in 2023 and beyond with writing, art and music. It will start as a collaborative approach and get more independent over time. As AI ethics mature, interactions with our employees and customer will become routine for AI.

Platform Consolidation

Organizations will be looking to consolidate costs and integrate isolated technology streams. It will drive a trend for integrated platforms that tend to be technology supermarkets that promotes more one-stop shopping for the technology leaders as business ramps up the demand for speed to results. Companies will look at their current platforms and look to consolidate their numbers if possible and drive additional uses of the strategic platforms. This trend will hit compute infrastructure, networks plus storage, and databases. The current surround and leverage multiple platforms trend will continue, but there will be increased pressure to eliminate some. It also means that automation and digital business platforms (DBP) will experience the same pressure. It will put a premium on general-purpose DBPS linked to pure specialty platforms.

More Secure Digital Commerce

We see increased activity from bad actors in security incursions and ransomware. It is getting more serious, and the threat of cybersecurity wars is looming. Organizations will take extra precautions to prepare for ransomware and security incursions. As cybercrime escalates, the dangers and costs increase dramatically. It may not be apparent, but adversaries are stockpiling your vulnerabilities. Once made public, there can be a feeding frenzy. A growing number of threats from various sources and attacks should concern businesses. There is now a sophisticated and growing ecosystem of harmful sources. As the world heads for stable digital commerce, there will be increased efforts to engage government and financial industry leaders to create secure models that guarantee free trade. All efforts will be aimed at rigorous testing of all safeguards.

Net; Net:

Increased productivity from intelligent automation and human assistance will enable organizations to expand their experiences for constituents while saving money. Get ready for higher levels of technical and human collaborations. Consolidation and automation savings will be allocated to investing in the platform's safety and leverage. Still, managers will keep their eyes open for technologies not to miss out on in 2023. It will require a more disciplined approach to staying linked to goals in a near real-time fashion while dealing with various and dynamic people and automation resources.

What Were Folks Reading in the 1st Quarter 2022?

Organizations are trying to balance innovation with profitability. This puts a premium on better transparency and staying on track with goal-led approaches. All of this while chasing a shifting supply chain plagued by COVID, the Ukrainian conflict, and growing pressures in the Pacific region. Speed to manage change seems to be the focus along with the savings that automation delivers to drive savings leveraged for the bottom line and innovation. Five years ago innovation would be the primary focus without the pressures we face today. Look at the results for the first quarter's readings and see if you have another reason

The offshore activity seems to be consistent with 2021 results with heavier than usual activity in the Northern European countries. 

The last 12 months' activity is certainly worth a study as well

2022 Top 5 Technical Trends

It is safe to say that organizations will focus on assured success in 2022. While the allure of new digital solutions and the temptation of true transformation will still seem to call, organizations will stick with what works. It does not mean that organizations will not innovate; it means that the innovation will be undertaken with wisdom while staying congruent with the Top 5 Business Trends in 2022. (Click here for more information). Part of that wisdom will also be keeping an eye for emergent situations and technologies that could derail these focused efforts that are highly synched to the stakeholders and executive directions. Organizations will double down on successful technologies and expand their uses while keeping a watchful eye for technical innovation and experimentation.

Automation Will Pay the Bills Now

All the focus on hyper-automation is starting to pay off. Organizations are getting substantial benefits from newer automation approaches. Consequently, there will be additional bets on combinations of technologies that deliver the best returns. These returns will not only contribute to the bottom line for current earnings, but they will also help fund any new tech efforts that management deems essential to compete. The silo technologies coming together to deliver great automation include process/workflow, RPA, Process/Data mining, Business Lead, Low Code, Monitoring, Simulation, Mapping, and Analytics. There are a variety of combinations that have compelling case studies, and many organizations have had significant successes. Putting together a portfolio of initiatives that deliver savings and opportunities to support business directives is a must for 2022. Having a platform of integrated technologies is a big help in providing the benefits of technical combinations. Click here to see example combinations and vendors that have proven success as a Digital Business Platform (DBP)

AI Drives Deeper and Expands Current Roles

Ai has proven its value in learning from data, and that will continue to gather steam focused in and around desired business outcomes. When combined with analytic and statistical models, AI can move into more thinking situations on top of the already important detection and pattern recognition duties AI is known for today. The data sources for detection mining will expand beyond traditional data to include images, videos, voice, and communications. The kind of thinking situations AI can move into in the short term would consist of knowledge acquisition/leverage, modeling, projections, autonomous actions on emergent situations. Conversational and explainable AI will make substantial headway in 2022, building on existing success. A new movement in AI will revolve around intelligent chatbots, smart automation bots, and intelligent applications. As AI ethics mature, interactions with our employees and customer will become routine for AI

Employee Focused Technology Gather Steam

With the emphasis on hybrid work, organizations have changed how work is accomplished for the operational support of business activity and the projects that are meant to improve operations or tactics while staying on top of business directives. It’s safe to say that we are all finding plusses and minuses of working independently. Suffice it to say that we have to make remote work easier for the workers first because of the skills shits and the supply and demand equation in favor of employees. We have to make it easier on employees. Right now, they have multiple bosses that they are matrixed to at any given time and have to deal with many communications channels and a lot of noise communications. It's not easy to sort through the mass of collaborations because it’s not always clear what task supports what priority directive; consequently, employees are confused and frustrated. In addition, leaders do not have enough visibility on behavior, so they don't know if their assignments are progressing. All can be helped in 2022 with better or new results-oriented collaboration tools tied into real progress. Investing in employees is a crucial differentiator for 2022, and employees will smell insincere actions and vote with their feet.

Decision Focus Drives a Better Data Mesh for Key Analytics

Managers will be making more integrative decisions that will require more detailed data, often sifted by AI, and need a lateral view that looks for the implications to multiple contexts. It will drive two significant activities over and above the resurgent analytic sectors. One is integrated visibility that looks across the organization and even outside the organization. Often there will be integrated monitoring or management cockpit that will visualize results, notify managers of significant detections and allow them to try different alternatives leveraging prediction, simulation, and various analytical modeling to take appropriate and quick action. The simple decisions will eventually get automated, and autopilot actions will be suggested or enacted. The other is establishing, growing, and managing a data mesh. All of this is entirely dependent on having an intelligent data mesh that knows where the data is and the level of quality of said data regardless of data type (operational databases, behavioral data, voice, or video), no matter where it resides. This huge vacuum is being filled as we speak with emergent and new data management software that catalog and reach into various sources (cloud or not), notifying the manager of the data quality scores.

 

Most Executives Ride Maturing Technology

Innovative management will be taking advantage of new techs as it matures, such as 5G, Digital Twins/IoT, Security Mesh, NFTs, and Digital Currencies. Savvy organizations will try to pick up emergent technologies for their risk culture tolerance at the appropriate stage. If you integrate all of Gartner's hypercycles, you might get a good feel for what is mature and when things might mature for the organizations with low-risk tolerance. Some organizations proactively pick the emergent technology through self-experimentation, others wait for success stories, some wait for competitors to show usage, and others jump on technologies with momentum. Some let the CIO do the dirty work and suggest. Others push ahead without checking the latest tech as long as they don't miss a big push tech like 5G. I would offer a cooperative approach between business and IT to integrate operational and project plans with tech-savvy folks in IT and special folks in the business. Pick at least one in a new category for 2022.

Net; Net:

While growth and innovation with better connections to constituents will dominate organizations' desire in 2022, there will be a strong vein of agile practicality dominating the technical scene. While organizations need to treat customers better and measure their behavior, the employees and partners supporting the organization will also need some significant attention in 2022. This means that some automation savings will be allocated to investing in the people touching the organization inside and out. This will require focusing on the use of existing technologies and expanding to the use of new technologies. As a result, organizations will have less unfocused technology activities in 2022, but managers will be keeping their eyes open for technologies not to miss.

What Were Folks Reading in 2021

 It's always a thrill to see what people are interested in these days of intense business challenges and digital progress. There seems to be a keen interest in automation to drive the benefits train of digital progress. There are plenty of things to read on automation and hyper-automation, so I focused on emerging topics in 2021. There seems to be a general drive towards speedy management of both operations and initiatives that are driven by strategic directions. This drove the number of hits up for topics like Results-Oriented Communications (ROC) that links strategy to detailed activity support those strategies. It also piqued the interest in Real-Time Dashboards and Management Cockpits. There was plenty of debate around the meaning of Digital Transformation and the Digital Business Platform (DBP). An emerging theme seems to revolve around accountability and transparency of outcomes. results, and improvement. Most driven by Customer Journeys and now Employee Journeys in the Hybrid Era as Communications are in Chaos with the speed of business and the distances resources are from each other. All of this is highly dependent on data sources that are lacking accuracy and are growing in unimaginable ways putting a premium on Reducing Data Sprawl and Building a Data Mesh on a Unified Database. There has been a shift in activity in Europe toward the northern countries where innovation often starts. It's been a good year for learning about the early results of digital innovation setting the stage for 2022.  Take a peek at the graphs below to pick out some reading in advance of 2022 and all the best in your digital lives. Click on the Images for a blow-up of the visuals. If you have topic ideas for 2022, comment on this post or contact me through Linkedin.

 

Net; Net:

Organizations have been picking low-hanging fruit off the digital tree and have been combing the very best yielding technologies to get solid benefits. These include process management, RPA, Machine Learning (Easy AI), Data Mining, and Low Code. All of this while trying to be opportunistic with new data and new data types. 

Linking Strategy to Operations

There is a constant balancing act between strategy and operations, and it gets even more challenging during periods of change or near impossible during significant chaotic events. COVID has brought this issue front and center with the increased speed of decisions and intelligent actions on several fronts. We aren’t through this threat scenario yet, but we can expect more threat and opportunity situations to emerge globally and locally. It puts a premium on superior insights, optimal decisions, and an excellent management overview. It means that the links between strategy and operations need to be optimal while allowing for emergent change. The days of the steady course are numbered at worst and only temporal at best. It means that an "Insight First" approach based on "Contextual Insights" to stakeholders is needed.

What Are the Links Between Operations Strategy and Business Strategy?

The business strategy is the overall business vision looking further ahead and anticipating the direction and business wants over a long period. The operations strategy is to provide a plan for the operational functions to make the best use of an organization's resources. Therefore, operations strategy must be aligned with its business strategy to enable the company to achieve its long-term plan. In addition, it means that its operations must be agile enough to support strategy changes while feeding monitoring information that might indicate trends that imply a change to the current strategy.

Example Checklist for Methods Linking Strategy to Operations

The recipe for linking strategy to operations has some essential ingredients that much be put together to support optimal results in several changing contexts. First, it means that connecting “what to how” is critical to be kept optimal and ready for change. Ideally, each company should have an integrated method and supporting toolset. The methodology must link the what and the how in a well-woven way across organizational stovepipes and business boundaries.

WHAT FACTORS:

Vision and Mission

Strategy / Scenarios

Critical Success Factors

Risks / Patterns / Events


HOW FACTORS:

Policy / Rules / Boundaries

Objectives / Goals

Projects / Initiatives / Milestones

Processes / Orchestrations

Organization / Partners


Example Checklist of Functionality in Tools Linking Strategy to Operations

Supporting a comprehensive methodology that links strategy and operations that delivers results should be a tool suite, generally a digital business platform that focuses on results, change opportunity, and change management. This platform/tools suite should link/integrate many functions and features that deliver business outcomes. This highly integrated platform has to work seamlessly with the method across functional silos and help focus participants on results. A management cockpit often visualizes the results that build a base for automated management functionality built on top of this integrated platform.

Strategy Planning Features

Strategy Performance Reporting

Balanced Scorecards

Operational Performance

Contextual Analytics

BI Dashboards / Fast boards

Collaboration Features Organized by Results

Real-Time Chat That is Visible to All

Audit Trails by Data Point

Action Plans Linked to Stakeholders

Integrated Risk Management

Integrated Process Management

Integrated Low Code Features

Integrated Process Mining

Net; Net:


There is a delicate balance between operations and strategy. At the same time, the obvious and traditional approach is to lay a plan and implement it optionally at the operational level. It works well in periods of stability, and the active monitoring points to more optimization. However, in a more emergent world with change, operations can point out emergent signals and patterns that may suggest a need for change. A solid methodology linked with an integrated platform will allow for both proactive and reactive strategy changes and monitor the effect of major and minor changes. Organizations should be pursuing this balance with the help of an integrated method supported by a corporate performance digital platform that embraces the management cockpit.

 
Please Help with A Survey On Management Cockpits by Clicking Here You will receive a summary of the results if you leave an email address in February. Please be patient with the initial screen and use your down arrow on the drop-down selections.

Additional Reading:

Frictionless Management

Real-Time Fast Boards

Management Cockpits

Real-Time Strategy

Management by Wire

AutoPilot Management

Budgeting Technologies For 2022

 Many of us have to participate in the budgeting process and it usually is not the most pleasant process. Let's take a look at the context for creating our 2022 Tech Budgets. Besides business and organizational trends, the trends in technical spending come into play. Gartner published actual spending trends for technology in July and organizations have an increased spending level of 8.6 % to date. In that same report, Gartner predicted a 5.3% increase in spending for 2022 that is an overall decrease of 3.3%. The big increase is in enterprise software at 11.7 % that is counter to the decrease. The question is what kind of software should organizations be investing in? This post identifies my prediction of the most popular software purchases for 2022. They are in no particular order. Each organization needs to allocate their increase in several of these categories even though there may be some pioneering. 

Results-Oriented Communications (ROC)

With all the emphasis on attaining better business outcomes, innovation, digital transformations, and better resource management, a new category of software has emerged to focus important communications and tie them to actual results stakeholders really want. ROC helps create and maintain a laser focus on results and helps organizations cut out the noise communications. Here are some detailed readings on the topic:

Results-OrientedCommunications Post

Hybrid Work Model Post

Chaotic Communications Post

Costs of Not Having ROC

Management Cockpits/Data Science

A management cockpit allows management to grasp complex situations quickly by integrating all the pertinent data, promoting the collaboration of many individual views of information necessary to make the required decisions as soon as possible, thus taking proper and timely adjustments or actions. It is an integration of crucial perspectives that leverages data science and the latest data. Here are some detailed readings on the topic:

Management Cockpit Definition

Frictionless Management

Real-Time Fastboards

Real-Time Data Mesh/Fabrics

The shackles are off for the next generation of databases, but the challenges are steep. Few organizations have a holistic and pervasive view of where their data is and how to best view and operate on it. The new databases act as meshes that know where the data is and can combine it in various time channels in real-time at best and on short notice at worst. Without really having to know where the data is, business pros can access their specific views for their purposes if the data is housed or in a nearby could infrastructure. Here are some detailed readings on the topic:

Data Mesh Definition

Real-Time/Archival Data Mix

Hybrid Data

Human Augmentation & Skills Leverage

Technology will provide new perspectives on work, particularly from the outside in the new digital experience. In addition, technology will supercharge our skills to a higher level where there are current skills and will allow for the heterogeneity of work even when skills are scarce. The idea of pure specialization will recede as people are assisted with work by leveraging additional intelligence applied in context with hybrid data. Here are some detailed readings on the topic:

Organizational Journeys

Customer Journeys & Tech

Roles & AI

Intelligent Autuomation

Organizations depend on automation to lower costs or provide a funding mechanism for new digital approaches or both. This means that automation moves from mechanically focused speed increases, and reduction of human tasks to smarter and data-informed approaches that leverage process, mining, AI, and bots teamed up with AI-assisted human collaborators. There are many automation streams that are coming together with specialty digital business platforms(DBPs). Here are some detailed readings on the topic:

Automation & AI

Automating with DBPs

Top Digitial Technologies

Net: Net: 

Organizations will have to balance automation with better customer journeys while learning how to master the evolving and emerging digital technologies. It means that budgets will have to be aligned and realigned often as digital moves forward. All this digital activity while business strategies evolve.  Confidence can be gathered from looking both to the past and the expected future in determining the best budgeting now. Here are some detailed readings on the topic:

Digital Transformation

Aligning Strategies

Digital Progressions

What Have People Read in the First Half of 2021

 Thanks to all who have read my posts and especially for the feedback. As momentum swings up in this shift from the lockdown mentality to near full speed, the topics are shifting ever so slightly. There is still a big emphasis on hybrid work and results-driven collaboration, but the demand for top talent is forcing a shift in management attitude as I tried to capture in corporate culture and leadership style posts. The top topics in the last year are Customer Experience/Journeys, Management Improvement, Trends in Digitial, Digital Business Platforms (DBP), Better Ongoing Data Management/Data Mesh, and Real-Time Business Response. See Figure 1 for the last 12 months running. 

The first half of 2021 has all of the trending topics included, but a couple of new topics have popped up. Most organizations want to be more aware, so the interest in Management Cockpits and Real-Time Fast Boards is increasing. Also, organizations are concerned about the direction and progress towards digital transformation. In other words, "Is my digital progress on point?" "Are Management Disciplines Keeping Up with Better Learning?" See Figure 3 for the first half of 2021. Figure 2 identifies the most active countries for the first half of 2021 outside of the US which dominates the number of hits to date (not shown).  Let me know of any topics you would like me to address and I will try unless they are way out of bounds for me. 

                                Figure 1 Top Hits for the Last 12 months 

                                Figure 2 Non-US Hits 

                                Figure 3 Top Hits for the First Half 2021 

What is a Digital Transformation?

I've recently been asked to describe and define transformation so that organizations, end-users, and vendors can claim transformation. According to the multiple definitions I found on the web, "A transformation is an extreme, radical change" So what do we deem extreme and radical? I would say that while pursuing a digital program, an organization discovers a new or dramatically extends a business model. An example would be an insurance company that became so great at insurance claims that it started a subsidiary to manage other organizations' claims. Another would be if an organization had a significant change in its competencies and skills that it looked and behaved radically different. However, there are incremental ways of sneaking up in these sweeping changes and transformations. So it might take a while to claim a true digital transformation.

While I don’t think that transformation ends, there are points in the transformation process to declare an organization transformed. To that end, I tried to develop a way to measure if the transformation effort is significant. Besides the softer sides of organizations like culture, organization, competencies, and skills that are harder to measure, there are five dimensions of change that I was able to noodle out to describe here. I'm sure this will morph over time, but this is my first stake in the ground, and I'll go from here. See Figure 1 for a spider diagram (aka Kiviat diagram) of the dimensions of transformation where I showed a typical traditional process or application measured on the diagram. The idea is to move the measurements to the edge as depicted by the red arrows. The five dimensions are described below. While the shape will vary by organization, a transformation would occur with an average of a "4" for each measure.

                                       Figure 1 Transformational Dimensions

Innovation: You can find many business leaders and business GURUs saying that innovation is the new area for competitive differentiation. I find this hard to argue with as many new digital technologies are emerging as business climates are changing and new/non-traditional competitors are entering many industries. So organizations that can match the many moving parts of customer need with the emergent set of digital technologies at the right time will be pretty innovative. Like it or not, change is accelerating, and how organizations deal with it will make the difference in the survive, thrive, and capitalize continuum. If you are reacting to table-stakes change, you might survive. If you are collaborating or ideating on better solutions, you can go beyond survival. If you are "built for change" and practice agile approaches, you are more likely to thrive. If you practice "Out of the Box thinking and implement it before others, you are likely to capitalize. Pushing this dimension to the edge requires a stomach for risk. Take the risk to become innovative.

Personalization: Today, if you know your customer and have much of the data accessible in one spot or as few as many, you have a good chance for survival. However, this is the minimum. You need to know more about your customer, which notably includes their overall goals and the goals of each interaction with your organization. Organizational goals will often be at odds with customer goals, so striking a balance between your organization's goals and your customers' goals will be essential. This goal confusion is where digital assistance and real-time analytics can help sharpen focus on what the customer really wants. Listening to the customer sentiment emerging in their voice and moving images can tell you a lot at the moment or over time. Customers do not just want standard transactions aimed at organizational outcomes; they want better practices aimed at their whole journey. This process includes transactions outside of your organization's scope at times. This process applies to employees, partners, and vendors as well. Pushing this dimension to the edge will imply more short-term costs, but the outcomes will be more profitable overall in terms of satisfaction and loyalty. Invest in your constituents.

Scope of Impact: Often, short-term costs and timing can be wrung out of departmental processes and workflows to the delight of the accountants and the department heads. However, cross-organizational methods that consider the goals conflicts between organizational units have proven to deliver more benefits over the long haul. The short-term benefits for any department may not be optimized, but the overall outcome will be better for all. Savvy organizations will look at their internal processes and consider comprehensive strategies that include external organizations. Some organizations have outsourced tasks and functions to make them cheaper at the cost of the end-to-end process. When something goes wrong in this case, the "finger-pointing starts."  More progressive organizations will look at complete value chains, entire supply chains, along customer/employee journeys. Pushing this dimension to the edge takes longer and costs more, but the overall solutions are better. Journeys constitute an important principle included in Industry 4.0 that pushes this dimension to the edge. Break down the walls inside or outside your organization.

Automation: Hyper-automation is a popular term today that combines the automation benefits of many digital tech streams. There are many benefits in this particular dimension that have driven BPM, RPA, and Mining. While this is a good direction, this automation needs to become intelligent and learn to become better over time. The collaboration of man and machine starts to emerge to augment the humans involved in the processes. These and future automation will be free to sense, decide, and act independently as they learn over time. However, automation will need to be driven by goals and guided by constraint guard rails. As more business conditions, events and patterns become emergent and changing; this dimension will travel to the edge over time. Free your automation to seek goals and be guided by constraints.

Secure Digital Tech: Digital technology will need to emerge and mature. Organization's experiences with each technology stack, such as iBPMS, RPA, Machine Learning, Mining, Data Mesh, Hybrid Cloud, Deep Learning, Distributed Database, Chatbots, Knowledge-bots and Bots/Agents on the Edge will play an essential role in the future. These unique digital technologies have started to converge in profitable pairings and end up Digital Business and Technology Platforms that work well together. Over time they will become competent and help organizations self-adapt. Combine digital technologies into platforms for better leverage.

Net; Net:

There are no universally accepted transformation definitions that guide organizations today. This writing is my attempt to start one, and I hope it evolves. You will see me use the above dimensions to rate example implementations to show if a transformation is impactful enough to be declared a transformation. Until then, each vendor will claim transformation victory, and organizations will make changes incrementally. Remember that closer to the edge means real transformation. Also, remember to give your organization credit for softer progress implied by skill-building that leads to competencies.

 

 

  

What Have People Read in the 1st Quarter 2021?

Before I answer the question in the title, I'd like to thank my readers for keeping my blog going. It's going on eight years now and the blog seems to be flourishing with over 720K hits during that time. I wanted to share what folks have been reading during the last year plus what's hot in 2021. There has been a shift away from RPA and a movement to business improvement through process improvement. At the same time, there is a revolution in the use of data in the cloud and the data mesh that spans the cloud inclusive of on-prem data. Collaboration that is focused on outcomes is also an emergent theme. Expect to see more holistic management driven by increased business visibility. If you want to access any of these posts, please hit here and use the search function on the blog.  

Figure 1 depicts the hottest topics over the last year running which points to Customer Journeys (CJM), Data mining, Real-Time Data, and the Data Mesh

                                      Figure 1 Recent Years Hits 

Figure 2 shows the involvement of the international community of interested readers which adds up to about one-third of my hits. The US generates two-thirds of my blog activities. 

                                          Figure 2 Non-US Hits 

Finally, I answer the question in the headline about what people are reading in 2021 in Figure 3. You will find the rise of data topics and general management topics. Hot topics include Digitial Business Platforms, Process/Data Mining, Voice Data, Continuous Improvement, and Focused Collaboration. 

                                      Figure 3 Top 2021 Hits So Far

Real-Time Data Mixes Well with Archival Data Now

Combining real-time situational data with archival trend data gives context for the understanding of emerging situations. This powerful combination of data sources could imply a need to take actions in the form of immediate response or longer-term change to policies or processes. However, there has always been a bridge troll preventing organizations from bridging real-time data with data archives. That troll was performance issues with volumes of locked data. Well, the troll has taken a permanent position at another bridge somewhere. What has changed is the modern data mesh that leverages the cloud while taking advantage of these emerging combinations of real-time, operational, and archived data sources. The data mesh leveraging the hybrid cloud releases many of these technological constraints.

What are the Challenges of Real-Time Data?

First, organizations have to leverage these new data mesh capabilities in their technical architectures. These technical architectures will reveal some new challenges surrounding creating schemas, selecting data aggregation or location approaches, deciding on data formats, tuning development cycles, and establishing situational testing approaches for new kinds of algorithms leveraging real-time data. Once technically enabled, then the real fun begins. People tend to resist new approaches because they must learn something new and become acceptable to stay even. Smart managers will incent folks to take the risk of taking on something new. Rewarding risk is essential because recognizing real-time patterns will significantly impact the organization operationally and tactically and even tip strategies in new directions. Once the benefits become evident, others will follow suit quickly. There will be new pressures to establish data quality in organizations' fabric, ergo a culture change.

What are the Challenges of Archival Trend Data?

The problem with archival data is that it is locked in the format in which it was created. The unlocking of the data may require a severe unpacking of the real meaning or even change the format or context. In other words, it might have to be recoded to answer new questions and situations. Even if the data was unpacked and readily usable, how well will it behave? Was the data quality tolerance set at the right level? Will the meaning of the data have to be normalized to use it in combination with other data sources? With more and more archival data going online and even in the cloud, this challenge grows daily. It may require a data archaeologist to understand and leverage archival data optimally truly.

What are the Opportunities of Combining Real-Time Data with Archives?

Despite the challenges, the opportunities loom large. The ability to mix emergence with historical data and trends over time offers new insights to the learning organization.  I think the best way to describe the upside is through use cases.

Healthcare:

Using real-time monitoring data has changed patient care for the better. The problem is that the real-time data does not consider the patient's history that is locked in various patient history sources. While doctors will always be needed, they aren’t always available with the right history record. Imagine a world where the patient's history can be leveraged in an instant with emerging situational monitoring data. Add some machine learning and advisory AI; patients can be assisted more responsively.

Investments:

Using real-time trading has been getting better over time and even influenced by overall market guardrails to slow runaway downtrends. The trading bot may not use individual investors' goals that depict risk tolerances or yield plans, or mixes. Imagine a human or bot-based trader making trades influenced in real-time by the wishes of individual investors' aggregation by risk and yield personas.

Supply Chains:

Imagine a dynamic supply chain that can shift shipments under changing conditions that can take supplies in-flight and change their destination based on need. While we have faster delivery times and real-time monitoring of shipping progress details, we don’t link it to customer history. Imagine shifting delivery to adjust to emerging conditions and history, delivering vaccines to traditional hot spots like nursing homes in an accelerated fashion when more supplies appear unexpectedly.

Net; Net:

New data mesh capabilities will enable new opportunities for organizations to combine real-time data with both archival data and real-time operational data. It will require some preparation and some changes in how we all behave, but the outcomes will not be possible before. Situational computing partners with trends and history now. There is real power in interpreting the emerging real-time situation in the context of historical conditions or behavior.

 

 

 

 

Specialty Digital Business Platforms are Flourishing

 Digital Business Platforms (DBPs) are springing up worldwide because of the need for more combined functionality that works seamlessly together for the business professional. While there are still many richly featured/complete business platforms out there that are thriving well, there is also an explosion of specialty digital business platforms that focus on outcomes that are immediately appealing to organizations. This post will try to identify and describe the business-focused digital platforms instead of technical and infrastructural digital platforms. I have found 10 of these categories so far that I have described below.  I give some example vendors, but my lists are not exhaustive. Click on the names of the vendors if you wish to link to their web presence.  

All-Inclusive DBPs

These DBPs bring together as close to fully functional digital features that typically business function for core transactions,  business process for automation combined with friendly customer/employee experiences, analytics/AI for the added insight, low code data integration (aka Fabric/Mesh) and development and a comprehensive internet of things (IoT) with digital twins. These first started to emerge in 2015 and rapidly grew with the digital transformation emphasis. They bring the advantage of holistic and integrated platforms that need little augmentation. DBPs put the integration of many silo technology stacks in the rearview mirror. The degree of integration quality and the amount will vary by vendor. Please see one of the first posts on DBP with one of the first illustrations to reach the light of day by clicking here.

Example Vendors Include:

Genpact

Oracle

Pegasystems

Salesforce

SAP

Specialty Digital Business Platforms

Specialty DBPs combine/integrate two or more needed technology silos for significant benefit to organizations in their digital transformation journey, even if it is only a portion of that journey. The key driver for these decisions is often tactical to deliver a sorely needed set of business outcomes as quickly as possible. They are not necessarily aimed at becoming an all-inclusive DBP, but they can play a role in creating their own all-inclusive digital business platform.

 

1.      Business Application Driven DBPs

These platforms concentrate on a business application or specific business processes that contribute to horizontal business outcomes, such as human resource (HR) onboarding or enterprise resource planning (ERP). Additionally, vertically based suites of processes and applications revolve around specific industries such as insurance claims, oil and gas platforms management, mortgage loan processing, or banking systems. The list is relatively long of vertical applications or services available.

Example Vendors Include:

Oracle

SAP

Workday

2.      Sales/Customer Experience Enablement Platforms

This class of platforms combines customer relationship management from sales through the servicing of customers. Customer Experience platforms are usually a collection of tools that help companies establish their customer interaction experiences and goals. The breadth of channels through which customers can interact with a company is often so spread out that it's difficult for just one solution to manage them all. The sales process is where the interaction starts with the customer, and these platforms also include sales automation capabilities that speed sales and revenue pipeline management.

Example Vendors Include:

Oracle/Netsuite

Pegasystems

Salesforce

3.      Business Process/Workflow Platforms (BPM)BPM software

A BPM platform provides a framework and tools for managing the tasks and workflow related to people or systems. Typically, BPM software helps define, automate, and report processes to help businesses optimize businesses to deliver on organizational goals. The processes often span an organization's full operations and are aimed at monitoring the effectiveness of operations. They manage the full process lifecycle and processes instances.

Example Vendors Include

Appian

Nintex

Pegasystems

 

4.      Hyperautomation Platforms

Hyperautomation is the application of various combinations of advanced technologies like robotic process automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), low-code, and Process Mining (PM) to augment workers, accelerate task completion, and even automate processes in ways that are significantly more impactful than traditional automation capabilities. An example would smart bots who collaborate with knowledge workers to complete work.

Example Vendors Include

Appian

Automation Anywhere

Blue Prism

UI Path

WorkFusion

 

5.      Collaborative Work Platform

A collaborative platform is a virtual workspace where resources and tools are aggregated to facilitate communication and personal interaction, particularly in projects or casework. Often sharing content is involved even if it is real-time or leveraged in work schedules.

Example Vendors Include

Microsoft

Monday.com

Slack

Zoom

6.      Data Science/Analytic Platform

These platforms rely on transparent data access, consistent metadata, strong enterprise governance, automated machine learning, deep learning, and model building, operationalized model management, and tools that measure and improve its impact on business. You might think of a data science platform as a factory for creating analytic models. These platforms are for organizations that are always listening and analyzing for innovation.

Example Vendors Include

Apache Spark

SAS

Tibco

 

7.      Data Mesh/Fabric Platform

Data mesh/fabric is an architecture and set of data services that provide consistent capabilities across a choice of endpoints spanning on-premises and multiple cloud environments. The Data Mesh/Fabric simplifies and integrates data management across cloud and on-premises to accelerate digital transformation. It allows for creating dynamic data views quickly in real-time to manage to the moment.

Example Vendors Include

Informatica

SingleStore

Tibco

 

 

8.      Digital Twin Platform

Digital twin software provides a virtual representation or simulation of a physical asset and is used to monitor the asset's performance in real-time. These tools are used to simulate performance, predict potential maintenance needs, and ultimately optimize the asset for peak performance.

Example Vendors Include

Bosch

IBM

Microsoft

Siemens

9.      Cybersecurity Platform

Cybersecurity platforms should be able to prevent, detect, and respond to threats across an enterprise IT infrastructure (i.e., endpoints, networks, servers, or cloud-based workloads). In simple terms, a Data Security Platform (DSP) is a type of data security solution that aims to combine a suite of traditionally siloed security tools. Most Data Security Platforms will combine functionality designed to locate and protect data on-premises and in the cloud.

Example Vendors Include

CrowdStrike

HP/Microfocus

IBM

 

10   Emerging Hybrid Platforms

Emerging Hybrid Platforms combine various siloed technologies into a more usable combination of functionalities. We are still in the emergent stage of the specialized and generalized digital business platforms.

Example Vendors Include

ABBYY                 Process and Content Intelligence

Parallel                   Collaboration and Process Improvement

VoiceBase              Analytics, Sentiment, and Voice Data

Wizly                     Corporate Performance and Data Science                      

 

Net; Net

Specialty DBPs started sprouting up around specific outcomes that organizations wanted early in their digital journeys. Vendors that chased these outcomes became popular, and some are even growing to all-inclusive DBPs while delivering impressive and focused benefits along the way. I expect this convergence for convenience to accelerate and continue before a consolidation that will likely be economically and advantage driven. Over time some of these specialty vendors will grow to compete with the all-inclusive DBPs and possibly collaborate with the all-inclusive DBPs.