Info-Tech’s latest report explores five priorities for emerging or leading-edge technologies and practices that can improve on capabilities needed to meet an organization’s goals.
With current economic, social, and regulatory conditions continuing to impact businesses and marketplaces globally, modern technologies often act as a lifeline by minimizing operating and delivery costs while providing a foundation for growth. However, relying solely on technology to keep the lights on is not a sufficient or sustainable approach to business. Applications teams must continue modernizing applications portfolios and strengthening business continuity and disaster recovery plans, as many economists agree that times of economic uncertainty are likely. To help applications and IT leaders be more pragmatic in prioritizing and planning application initiatives, global IT research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group has published its annual Applications Priorities 2023 report.
“Applications are critical components in any business strategy plan and can directly influence an organization’s internal and external brand and reputation,” explains Andrew Kum-Seun, research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “Business leaders are continuously looking for innovative ways to better position their application portfolios to satisfy their goals and objectives. Given the scope and costs often involved, these priorities must be carefully crafted to clearly state achievable business outcomes that satisfy the different needs of very different customers, stakeholders, and users.”
The applications priorities for 2023 were determined by evaluating responses within the Info-Tech Tech Trends 2023 survey and report, the CEO-CIO Alignment diagnostic, and the CIO Business Vision diagnostic. Combined with signals from secondary research, industry organizations, and member interviews, the data-based insights have been analyzed and compiled to help technology leaders plan and align their application priorities to their organizational business goals and objectives.
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The priorities identified in the new report explore emerging and leading-edge technologies and practices that can improve upon capabilities needed to meet the ambitions and goals of an organization.
Info-Tech’s research has revealed the following five key priorities to assist applications and IT leaders in the design, planning, and marketing of their applications priorities over the coming months:
- Digital Experience (DX) – Digital transformation is not just about new tools and technologies – it’s also about delivering a valuable digital experience. This requires adopting good management, governance, and operational practices to accommodate stakeholder, employee, customer, and end-user expectations of digital experiences. Applications and IT leaders must develop a digital business strategy and choose technologies based on what best enables, delivers, and supports these expectations.
- Intelligent Automation – Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are rapidly growing and are largely considered to be the next step in the business process automation journey. Intelligent automation combines AI and ML with traditional automation technologies, such as business process management and robotic process automation. Technology leaders must build a business process automation playbook and thoughtfully introduce AI and ML with a clearly defined plan.
- Proactive Application Management – Application management ensures valuable software is successfully delivered and maintained for continuous and sustainable business operations. However, application management is often viewed as a support function rather than an enabler of business growth, drawing organizational focus and investment only when it becomes problematic. Applications and IT leaders must reinforce proactive application management practices, define and manage their technical debt, and adopt site reliability engineering and DevOps practices.
- Multisource Systems – A multisource system is an ecosystem of integrated internally and externally developed applications, data, and infrastructure. These technologies can be custom-developed, heavily configured vendor solutions or commercial, off-the-shelf solutions. An effective sourcing model provides key skills, resources, and capabilities to meet the business’s innovation, time to market, financial, and quality goals. However, organizations often struggle with how best to support sourcing partners and allocate the right number of resources to maximize success. Technology leaders need to define the product vision in tandem with the goals of the applications department, strengthen enterprise integration practices, and develop a sourcing partner strategy.
- Digital Organization as a Platform – Digital organization as a platform (DOaaP) is a collection of integrated digital services, products, applications, and infrastructure that is used to meet and exceed an organization’s digital strategies. A digital platform enables organizations to leverage a flexible, reliable, and scalable foundation to create a valuable digital experience, ease delivery and management efforts, maximize existing investments, and motivate the broader shift to digital. Applications and IT leaders must define the organization’s platform vision, assess and modernize their applications, understand and evaluate the needs of their end users, and then architect the platform.
Info-Tech’s latest priorities report also includes insights in the form of case studies from technology experts at organizations such as Mastercard, University Hospitals, Cognizant, and e-Estonia.
