EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
At the end of the pandemic our team at Tecala suggested that mid-market organizations would ‘ emerge stronger ’. Those that would maintain their growth and profitability would be the organizations that had the agility to respond and adapt to rapidly changing conditions .
Effective risk management and Business Continuity strategies were important . But Digital Transformation programs , which has meant moving to the cloud and cloud-native SaaS applications , have helped many organizations adopt a flexible , hybrid work environment in which their people can be more productive and agile in how they work .
IDC predicts that 750 million cloud-native applications will be created globally by 2025 as businesses work toward building these sustainable digital value engines . It ’ s interesting to see the research company use the term ‘ digital value engines ’ rather than just ‘ apps ’, because it makes the point that technology needs to deliver tangible and measurable value .
Fuelling these IT solutions and platform , of course , is data . This is an important catalyst in achieving success in Digital Transformation programs because it gets IT leadership teams closer to enjoying the best outcomes from their investments .
As little as three years ago , we were saying that intelligent automation and virtual assistant technologies were referred to as a ‘ stretch goal ’. Now they ’ re considered essential strategies for driving efficiencies , improving performance , delivering better customer services and empowering employees .
Organizations that aren ’ t embracing intelligent automation , specifically robotic process automation , Artificial Intelligence , and Machine Learning technologies , probably won ’ t exist in 10 years . What this all comes down to is an organization ’ s ability to continuously innovate .
But with innovation potentially taking an organization in any direction , it ’ s important to know where you need your innovation to take you . Therefore , emerging CIOs are likely to be very comfortable with the strategic technology roadmap ( STR ) because it future proofs the ICT strategy by aligning technology with your business objectives .
In a modern business , where technology ( and the data it relies on ) no longer operates in siloes , but in an interconnected web of infrastructure , platforms , applications and devices that are dependent on one another for their performance , making sure they all work together is essential .
The CIOs that will be achieving the best outcomes in the years ahead will be those that align their technology strategies with their business or organizational objectives . They also need to encourage a culture of collaboration , continuous innovation , and adaptability to develop within the IT team . p
PIETER DEGUNST , MANAGING DIRECTOR , TECALA GROUP
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