Future fit strategies rooted in customer obsession will drive tech innovation.
According to Forrester Future Fit approach, technology strategies that enable firms to quickly reconfigure business structures and capabilities — amid ongoing uncertainty and changing business needs — will drive tech innovation in the 2020s. To address future customer and employee needs, firms will need to invest in technologies that are: 1) adaptive, to reconfigure core business concepts; 2) creative, to bring emotion and engagement to customer experiences; and 3) resilient, to deliver on vision and brand promise.
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The Forrester report “Your Future Fit Technology Strategy: Adaptive, Creative, And Resilient” introduces a new customer-obsessed approach and investment framework to help firms become more adaptive, creative and resilient. It reimagines the classic “people-process-technology” aspects of IT in favor of three new drivers: platforms, practices, and partners. These drivers will power the scale and speed needed in the 2020s, through accelerated time-to-value; alignment around outcomes; and market advantage through more focused co-innovation partnerships. The report also highlights new funding and sourcing considerations that will redefine th. The key highlights include:
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- Future fit tech will spark innovation and spawn new startups. As organizations become more adaptive and creative, everyday work (e.g., marketing campaign planning or invoice tracking) will get automated. This new era of productivity will free workers from routine tasks to concentrate on work that helps their businesses differentiate.
- Open source will accelerate innovation around platforms. Open source will drive the adoption of platforms. Ecosystems of vendors that can help customers specialize and customize around verticals will spring up.
- Upstart vendors will upend the market with new pricing models and industry focus. There will be an emergence of upstarts catering to verticals like financial services, healthcare, and life sciences — some of the dominant players in this space will move too slowly to effectively compete.
- Late adopter firms will outsource entire business functions and strategies to partners. Up to one-third of companies will outsource or create new joint ventures in sectors lagging in software-as-a-service adoption — such as retail and insurance.
- A tech trade war will force firms to leverage hybrid ecosystems. Thanks to geopolitical headwinds, ecosystem partnerships, relationships, and deep integrations are not going to seamlessly crisscross the world. Tech leaders will need a hybrid of global and regional ecosystems to manage tech nationalism as they develop future fit capabilities.
“The future fit technology approach is attuned to specific characteristics that firms need for future success,” said Stephen Powers, VP and group director at Forrester. “These characteristics were uncovered from quantitative analysis of more than 10,000 consumer and employee survey responses, plus qualitative analysis of numerous interviews with successful tech leaders. Firms that move faster, specialize to fight commoditization, take whole problems off the hands of their clients, and help clients navigate an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape will have a competitive advantage in the next decade.”
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