The proper use of technology enables businesses to be more efficient. Our recent research into
technology for business innovation found
that 56 percent indicate innovative technology is very important, yet
only 9 percent are very satisfied with theirs, showing plenty of room
for improvement. As we enter 2013, businesses have more choices than
ever for technology to improve business and IT. Our firm has identified
six key technologies that give organizations significant competitive
advantages: big data, business analytics, business and social
collaboration, cloud computing, mobile technology and social media. Our
research agenda for 2013 is designed to help organizations assess and
analyze these technologies and make the best possible decisions.
Big Data
Big data helps business and IT organizations manage and use information.
Our technology innovation research finds
only 14 percent of businesses today are very satisfied with their
existing big data technology. At the same time, organizations that
utilize big data effectively
have improved their business significantly, according to 28 percent of
organizations. Our research in 2013 will build on
our assessment of big data in 2012.
We will do a benchmark research study on big data analytics and another
on information optimization. We see that organizations are investing in
information assets that require big data and the analytics associated
with it to refine information and optimize business activities. Big data
can have significant business value, but using it requires that IT
coordinate with business on the benefits they can achieve. Making a
business case for an investment in big data technology can help
organizations address the top issue of it being too expensive, as found
in almost half (44%) of organizations. At the same time, organizations
need to ensure they have the competencies to meet big data needs, which
include not just the technology for storage and access but also
underlying information management issues such as data governance, data
integration and data quality, which
our research in 2012 found are still in embryonic form in most organizations.
Business Analytics
Our recent research on technology innovation found business analytics
to be the top-ranked priority, and very important to more than half
(52%) of organizations. Business analytics is not just a technology to
get metrics faster but a set of processes to operate smarter with
information, to better visualize and apply advanced methods
such as predictive analytics, and to identify ways to better search and
present information for a broad range of business constituents. Our
research finds only half (51%) of organizations are satisfied with their
existing processes due to lack of skilled resources. More than half of
organizations say analytics are too hard to build and maintain or data
is not readily available. The most time-consuming aspects of the process
are data-related ones, according to 44 percent of organizations. The
technology too still has room to improve, with only 20 percent being
very satisfied. The most critical capabilities are in the areas of
predictive analytics (49%), visual discovery (48%) and taking action on
the outcomes of the analytics (46%). We also found in
our next-generation business intelligence research that
the use of mobile technologies such as tablets is growing across
organizations. We also found in our research a high priority to use
social collaboration technology with business analytics to work together
on making improvements in shorter period of time than traditional email
or phone calls. Our research agenda in 2013 will investigate big data
analytics and next-generation business analytics approaches building on
top of
our research on predictive analytics,
which found that organizations still struggle to integrate predictive
analytics with information architectures to support analysts and data
scientists. Advancing the competencies and focusing on analytics are
critical processes, but businesses also need simpler communication of
results to help those responsible understand situations and consider
potential recommendation actions. We hope that technology suppliers will
work to better align to the human dynamics of what really happens with
analytics to better support communicating observations and insights to
ensure that end goals are achieved.
Business and Social Collaboration
The
revolution in social media has expanded into business, bringing with it
social collaboration and helping business processes by connecting
people to achieve goals personally, departmentally or across an
organization. This new technology was ranked the second most important
technology in our research, but only 17 percent of organizations are
very confident in their ability to use the technology well. With most
organizations (86%) using shared folders and documents, it should be no
surprise that part of the issue is related to technology. Organizations
are evaluating new methods such as wall posting (45%), social
recognition (41%), earning badges and awards (40%) and broadcast or
Twitter-like capabilities (39%). With only a quarter of organizations
being satisfied with their existing approaches, we see a lot of changes
coming in 2013 in regards to the technologies selected and deployed. Our
research in 2013 will examine where collaboration is critical in areas
of human capital management, sales, customer engagement and even
finance. Building on top of some groundbreaking research across business
and vertical industries, we see business advancing rapidly with or
without IT support, since business and social collaboration can be
easily onboarded through the use of cloud computing. Unfortunately
organizations are mixed in the methods they prefer to use to access
collaboration – embedded in applications, through Microsoft Office,
embedded within tools like business intelligence or stand-alone – making
it complex to have consistency for users and their interactions. Using
social collaboration with business analytics is a growing priority and
organizations will need to assess their technologies to see if they meet
this need. We believe that social collaboration will help bridge
generational divides between workers as it becomes more easily
accessible through web and mobile technologies, allowing managers and
workers to engage anytime or anyplace. Focusing on the benefits of
social collaboration, such as knowledge sharing, is critical as
our research finds as the top need in 49 percent of organizations.
Cloud Computing
Our research finds that businesses don’t see cloud computing as
innovative technology but rather as a utility and becoming a standard
method that can be easily accessed and leveraged as part of their
portfolio of computing options. These faster methods to onboard
applications have become easy and in most cases require little IT
involvement.
But beyond the simplicity for business and potential chaos for IT to
eventually govern and support, the cloud computing environment is now a
viable platform for IT to leverage in a multitude of methods, from IT
infrastructure to developing and operating applications. The cloud
computing environment can be used as a central point for integrating
data and storing it for the enterprise or for customers and suppliers,
but most organizations have not automated the integration of data to
support business processes or business analytics and decision support.
The lack of automation has increased concerns for data security, which
63 percent of organizations in
our data in the cloud research find
to be a major concern. In all of our research in 2012, the preference
for cloud computing is growing across lines of business and especially
in areas like sales, customer service and human capital management. In
2013 we plan to further assess the advancements in cloud computing, from
big data and analytics to information that can be leveraged from a
broad range of applications and services.
Mobile Technology
The use of smartphones and tablets has become common among consumers
who are also workers in organizations. Mobile technology is a new
platform on which organizations can deploy applications and tools for a
wide array of business needs. Yet
our next-generation workforce
management research finds only 8 percent of organizations indicate they
have everything they need on these technologies, and only a quarter
more indicate they have most but not all they need available, which
leaves a large number of organizations not able to meet their mobile
business needs. This might be why only 20 percent are very confident in
their use of mobile technology today. The debate on whether to use
native applications and tools or operate across a web browser
environment still looms, with native (39%) outpacing browser (33%) and a
fifth having no preference. Bring your own device (BYOD) is another
area of friction, where 39 percent of organizations allow this approach
with smartphones and 45 percent with tablets. Organizations have many
opportunities to determine how to use mobile technology effectively, and
can derive many benefits. Our next-generation business intelligence
research found increased workforce productivity was at the top of the
list in 55 percent of organizations. Our research in 2013 will further
investigate the use of tablets across the line of business, since this
was found to have the largest growth planned (34%), while smartphones
are more established.
Social Media
Social media is a new path for organizations to use to expand their
corporate footprint to a broader audience and to gain brand awareness by
marketing products and services. This new channel of opportunity
enables organizations to rethink how they operate many of their business
processes, including the ones that they use to find new talent and track candidates into an organization. In 2012
our research into social media and recruiting found
that only 7 percent of organizations are very confident in use of this
channel, but half of organizations are planning to change how they use
social media over the next year; for instance, 81 percent of
organizations have identified it as a method to identify new talent
pools. In 2013 we will continue to examine best practices and benefits
of investments in this channel. We will also assess social media as a
new channel for customers to engage with organizations through a new
benchmark in
next-generation customer engagement.
Our research in 2012 found organizations benefit from using this
channel to handle a broad range of customer questions and issues.
While new technologies can help business innovate, what’s old is
still new, and requires a foundation of skills and resources. For
example, with big data, those organizations that have information
management competencies to automate big data efforts will find
themselves further ahead, as they leverage the core skills of data
integration to handle more data environments. Those organizations that
use business and social collaboration to connect people and processes
more efficiently than conference calls and email will better leverage
their human capital investments.
At the same time new techniques can make it simpler to gain value
from existing technology investments, such as advancements in the use of
text to present analytics in a readable form, new methods to use
visualization as a discovery tool on analytics, and the ability to
engage employees by using new and more social collaborative methods.
Taking advantage of this technology requires smart use of best
practices, leadership from the top and agreement about the desired
outcome. Organizations need to have technology in place to develop a
business case with balanced evaluation criteria that are not about the
vision a vendor has but rather about what the vendor can provide to
advance business efforts. We use this practical approach in our vendor
and product assessment methodology and rating
called the Value Index which we will be assessing over 100 vendors in 2013.
Organizations
should explore resources in the company to determine if necessary skill
sets exist, since their lack is the top barrier to adoption of
technology according to 51 percent of organizations as
found in our research.
Part of this process is ability to know whether the technology can
adapt to the workers’ needs and capabilities, and whether it requires
weeks of training. Organizations should also look to the future and
examine how to use cloud computing to rent technology, and how to use
mobile technology to enhance collaboration. They should also keep pace
with peers and competitors through the use of benchmarks and industry
comparisons.
You can depend on Ventana Research to provide sound facts and
pragmatic guidance to help you leverage technology to gain a competitive
advantage in your business and innovate in your processes and with your
workforce.
Original Source http://marksmith.ventanaresearch.com/2013/01/29/technology-innovation-in-2013-is-a-business-and-it-priority/
Editor’s
note: The following announcement from the Department of Energy provides
context on a potentially very virtuous use of advanced data analysis
capabilities to help solve real-world challenges regarding energy costs
in the US. Before you get too excited about the potential here, remember
to read the details. As you dig deeper into the list of projects you
will note some potential for continued government-contractor goofiness
and waste, like giving $600k to SRI to have them develop new software to
read scientific publications. Seems like they could just buy some basic
discovery tools for that or if they wanted to really use advanced big
data tools could start by leveraging the Apache Hadoop framework first.
So read the below but remember, the devil is in the details- bg
.
Could it really be that pie charts might not be as 
