Dialing In Digital Technologies

It's fair to say that organizations struggle to match business outcomes to the myriad of digital technology categories, much less sort out the technology-specific vendors who can deliver the desired outcomes. This blog will attempt to identify what technology categories contribute to business results. To review the desired business outcomes for 2022, please click here. The typical desired outcomes will be listed below at the top of Figure 1. Listed on the side of that same figure will be the familiar digital technologies delivering successful results these days. Each technology is listed as either a primary or secondary contributor to each desired business result. It does not mean that a specific technology can't contribute or assist in gleaning desired benefits, but primary contributors are more likely to deliver benefits. Therefore, I would recommend that organizations have at least one primary technology as a base when pursuing business results. Often technology can be bought in bundles called digital business platforms (DBP), and a guide to them can be viewed by clicking here. These bundles often package several primary or secondary technologies together in a usable proven package.

    Figure 1: Digital Technology by Contribution to Business Results

Ten Proven Digital Technology Categories

Listed below are the typical technology categories that are active in delivering results today. In addition, there are case studies available for each of these categories across many industry categories.

AI Learning

AI is used to quickly learn from data categories and instances to find important signals, events, and patterns that may require decisions or appropriate actions.

AI Advice

It is where AI interacts with humans to give advice in context to augment humans in particular situations. AI Advice makes for a more pleasant interaction with both customers and employees.

Business Processes Management

A process is where the steps/tasks are ordered in the best way to achieve a set of desirable outcomes. It could range from simple workflows to emergent processes, often called cases, with standard complex processes in the middle.

Customer / Employee Journeys

Journeys are the optimal and pleasant experience for the customer aimed at the customer's complete experience, including events and interactions that go beyond your organization. It usually involves both modeling and measurement. With the advent of remote work, the employee journey rises in priority.

Decision Management

It is a range of intelligent assists for decision-makers, including decision modeling, decision enablers embedded in operations, and business intelligence algorithms.

Low Code Development

It is a set of methods, techniques, and tools that simplify computer programming ranging from visual approaches to reusable code chunks. Often Low Code is aimed at business professionals to interact with technology professionals.

Management Cockpit

It is a set of integrated visualizations for transparency, a collection of integrated decision assists and levers for action working together for operational, tactical, or strategic outcomes.

Process / Data Mining

Mining is the ability to scan and identify patterns to respond to from past signals, events, and actions. Often the data sources are logs of past activity in context.

Robotic Process Automation

It is the automation of tasks or processes to remove tedious or unnecessary tasks from humans or systems that need integration. More competent bots/agents are now emerging to make decisions or take action.

Results-Oriented Communications

It is the linkage of detailed communications to desired results for key stakeholders. It organizes collaborations, contents, messages, and various communications around actual results reducing confusion prioritizing tasks and actions for improvement.

Net; Net:

While Figure 1 above focuses on results and declares contributing digital technologies, there are many infrastructural technologies that are a must for digital progress. They would include data mesh/fabric technologies and cyber security infrastructures that enable safe and accurate operations of the above technology classes. When looking down the columns of desired business results, it is essential to pick a core technology to build around. Often these technologies are gathered together to build platforms like digital business platforms. Organizations will have to bring together contributing technologies themselves or buy a platform that brings together most of the needed primary and secondary technologies. Remember that technologies can always assist efforts, but prioritizing on primary impact makes the most sense.

Dodging A Digital Downturn

We all see the signs of a potential economic downturn on the horizon. There are no dumpster fires right now, but you can see signs of nervousness. Like it or not, uncertainty will impact all our organization’s digital efforts. It means that we will all have our outcomes tied to the kind of business outcomes that companies desire. If we want our digital initiatives to progress, regardless of their progression, we need to tie them to the best possible results from a business perspective. Here are the five desired outcomes that seem to appeal most to executives.

Increasing Revenues

The typical digital projects around revenue attract more prospects to your organization’s products and services. It usually includes adding compelling new digital channels and mechanisms to attract multiple generations increasing the sales funnel. Another primary stream is around speeding the progress of the prospects through the sales funnel by automating portions of the sales cycle. Care must be applied to not irritate prospects or add onerous tasks to sales professionals. Digital initiatives are often aimed a cross-selling/ upselling existing customers that are likely to accept offers.

Decreasing Costs

Often digital initiatives are aimed at cost reductions, and they usually deliver through various forms of automation and fast feedback from operational processes. Additional benefits can be gleaned by adjusting decisions and rules that govern/direct organizational processes and tasks. Adding more intelligence to processes and tasks is often another way to decrease costs by assisting or reducing the human resources necessary to complete work. The issue in cost reduction will be around competing with other efforts and expected rates of returns your executives expect. Linking silo efforts is a best practice for savvy organizations.

Reducing Risk

Preventing loss is a popular approach to justifying efforts. It can range from making sure your organization's actions comply with existing rules and regulations, planning responses to emerging threats, or taking proper advantage of apparent opportunities. Initiatives that bolster risk avoidance are always popular with executives making critical decisions often. Moreover, preventing loss is constantly on the mind of executives, so efforts to reduce any risk appeals.

Attracting/Keeping Customers

Initiatives that identify prospects by offering them a better experience for less money always attract investment. The more subtle efforts revolve around keeping the customers you already have. These days customer loyalty is not a given, so initiatives that help measure the voice of the customer scientifically and assist meaningful customer engagement are highly prized. It may be listening to your interactions with a customer looking for key phrases to indicate potential churn, customer satisfaction, promoter potential, etc. It may include watching the actual interaction over video channels as well. Some of the best feedback comes from employees on the front line working with customers. Adding new customers is one of the highest cost activities for organizations, so investments are needed.

Attracting/Keeping Employees

The days of employer intimidation are waning now, so attracting and keeping employees crucial for success is a more significant issue than ever. Savvy organizations are taking a new look at their processes and tasks for better treatment and leverage of employees. It may include more digital assistance for knowledge workers, but it includes removing friction from integrating silo systems and eliminating mindless tasks. Keeping employees requires creating a worker-friendly and trustworthy culture. Indeed, hybrid work environments help employees have more freedom, which is a minimal level of support. Digital initiatives can be used to gather input from employees to avoid things like we are experiencing today with the "great resignation."

Net; Net:

If the present nervousness is just a temporary phenomenon, rechecking how our digital efforts contribute to significant business outcomes is a great exercise. If more uncertainty emerges, linking to primary business outcomes will become a survival technique. If executives decide to pull back on digital initiatives, we will have to make sure key digital initiatives progress even if they become a lower priority. Remember that executives have to think they will beat their investment hurdle rate if they continue to invest in your digital projects. Knowing the hurdle rate for your organization or industry would be essential to understand when justifying digital projects. Keep in mind that digital initiatives that deliver a multitude of the five will get more support even in downtimes.

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.

2022 Top 5 Business Trends

Next year will be a year of focused revenue growth, streamlined time to results along the traditional cost optimizations. Organizations have learned where digital has delivered well consequently, they will be increasing their bets where results are more likely to carry the day. The emphasis on steady-state only results based on consistent KPIs will change to include more calculated innovations and emergent measures. Organizational visibility and insights will rule this year with stronger links measured from strategic direction to projects and operational results. Customer journeys, experiences, and feedback will be sharper, faster, and more frequent. Because of the skills scarcity and jobs becoming more complex base skills will have to be automated to free workers to take on more challenging tasks. Organizations have to be prepared for emergent scenarios as the world is much more dynamic and shifting. Innovation will be necessary at all levels even when pursuing focused goals and results because of change. Innovation will also be accelerated because of new easy-to-use digital capabilities. 

Tight Integration of Direction with Results 

Manging the synchronization between direction with the actual results is a constant challenge and both are changing dynamically. Not only must the direction be clear and repeated, but all must also understand how the direction plays out in operational results. The integration between actual results must be checked frequently and carried out with efficient communications. It means that the delegating of the monitoring and the adjustments necessary from operations must be in tune with the direction. It will require more than just collaborating managers with workers through a mish-mash of today's communications channels. The focus will require results-oriented communications that keep the stakeholder's results in the eyes and ears of everyone contributing.  It is not only necessary for the business results, but for efforts and projects trying to improve the status quo. All of these are in constant flux and need constant attention. The emphasis for 2022 and beyond will be stakeholder-driven outcomes. 

Competitive Customer Experiences

Organizations will have to change from tepid surveys that are after the fact to real customer journeys and delightful experiences that may not be synchronized with the established processes and procedures that are carried out by customer service personnel that act as buffers from the real experience and the rocky support systems that are often numerous and not designed for customers. Even in self-service situations, most organizations are just delegating the data entry to their customers to make the current and rigid processes or systems work. This perpetuates organizational silos and puts the burden of service on the customer. Keeping in mind that a real customer journey starts before it reaches your organization's door steps and often doesn't complete there is the first step in creating a customer experience that beats the competition. At your door step sentiment analysis using voice and video will gain in popularity. 

Increased Skill Augmentation

It is getting more difficult to find workers that will perform the basic skills of a job. There is a definite shortfall in the number of workers willing to do some of the basic tasks. The movement has started to replace these basic skills with robots and software bots. This is an unstoppable trend because there is no satisfaction for the workers to do this kind of work. The workers that are already doing the basics become opportunities to take on more challenging work assignments. This will likely require additional training or augmentation of base skill sets with forms of smart automation and knowledge extension with the help of AI, data mining, and other forms of augmenting technologies. workers will be given insights and guidance in the midst of their tasks. This may be audio or video assistance in synch with the work included in pre or post-activity pieces of training. 

Practiced Scenarios & Agility

We all know that the world was caught "flat-footed" by COVID. We saw supply chains designed for optimal conditions and no warehouses fall of their face. It was because nothing of that magnitude was ever anticipated and there was a bet that folks could manage to redirect and adjust if anything substantial occurred. The days of laying back and hoping for the best are gone. COVID may have been an outlier for generations past, but there are more coming with climate change, geopolitical events, and natural disasters. Many organizations will start the discipline of scenario planning and practice for such emerging scenarios. This is more than a fluke "black swan" event. We have been lucky in the past and our luck will run out. 

Continued Business Innovation

Innovation is not only about dreaming about new ways to please customers and perform efficient business events/transactions. Innovation is applying creative approaches to solving real problems that get in the way of results. Digital technologies are no longer the domain of the technical, but they are tools in the hands of business professionals. Learning to leverage processes and data closer to business problems is now becoming a reality. As more technology emerges and business types pick it up, there is no telling how it will deliver results. 

Net; Net:

Organizations now have experience in successful in deploying digital solutions or have at least seen other organizations show success. It is my bet that organizations will be focused on where success has been demonstrated and they will leverage proven success heavily in the next few years. The lessons learned from threatening business scenarios will be leveraged by savvy organizations to learn to be better prepared for emergent situations. Digital will help cope with the challenges and opportunities as it is proving itself helpful on a number of fronts now.  

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. 

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

Our warmest wishes for you and yours in this holiday season. Even if you don't celebrate, we hope you have a restful and peaceful time. It blows my mind that God would send his son into our world to wear skin for 30+ years to experience human pain, trials, and joy so that we might experience a close relationship with him. No matter your belief peace, and love from our family to yours. Sherry and Stella are enjoying the season. We are all fortunate to be healthy and blessed in this time with rampant diseases that are picking off the weak easily and the strong occasionally. 

 

Art for the 4th Quarter 2021

Another year comes to a close, but with more time spent at home, the art keeps coming. The painting below is a depiction of Bell Rock (mountain) in Sedona AZ and its spiritual appeal. It's one of the rare spots on this earth where many can feel a spiritual pull. Native Americans leave their prayers under prayer stones usually in the shape of a circle at the base of the rock. I personally have felt the spiritual pull there as well as at Spirit Lake in Wisconsin, the Garden Tomb in Isreal, Mt Masada near the Dead Sea, and Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, Canada. I'm sure we all have felt spiritual pulls in our lives, but this place is one of my favs. The rest of the art consists of some compelling fractals done in a relaxed manner. If you are interested in my creative outlets, please click here. 

Digital Black Hole

 Ice Heart

Fusion

Curly Smoke

Fire Mask

If you have a better name for my pieces or are stirred to purchase one, please contact me at jim.sinur@gmail.com.