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Here’s a proposition to consider: among the ranks of large enterprises, commercial success increasingly relies on digital transformation. In turn, digital transformation relies on modernized enterprise networks that deliver flexibility, performance and availability from the edge to the cloud. Intuitively, this hypothesis makes a lot of sense.

In many enterprises, it’s also increasingly becoming the subject of painstaking debate. After two years of quick-fix digitalization on top of pre-COVID-era network technologies, the limits of the status quo are becoming evident. All too often, legacy networks limit the potential for digital transformation. In many organizations, it’s way past time to address the fundamentals.

If this debate sounds familiar to you, it’s worth looking at the 2022-23 Global Network Report from NTT, a new piece of research that offers an intriguing view of how enterprises around the world are managing their networks.

Among other things, NTT’s survey suggests a strong correlation between a willingness to invest in modernizing networks and high levels of commercial performance. At the other end of the spectrum, NTT’s survey confirms many enterprise networks suffer from long-term underinvestment and increasing levels of technical debt. The distance between these two different approaches feels substantial.

NTT’s report – based on responses from over 1,300 network specialists and IT and business decision-makers worldwide – defines high levels of commercial performance using straightforward criteria. To qualify as a “top-performer”, organizations in the survey needed to have generated year-on-year revenue growth of over 10%. They also needed to have generated operating margins of over 15% in the last financial year.

In network terms, what do these organizations look like? It’s here that a willingness to invest in modern network technologies starts to look like an indispensable ingredient for high performance in commercial terms.

Nine out of 10 top-performing organizations are increasing network investment to support digital transformation. Many are spending over 2% of their annual revenues – a significant sum – on their networks, deploying technologies designed to enable rapid transformation, provide greater availability and flexibility, and support not just today’s requirements, but tomorrow’s requirements as well.

View the infographic: The 2022-23 Global Network Report from NTT

NTT

Eight out of 10 high-performing organizations say their network strategy is aligned with their business goals. In practice, this involves a clear understanding that the quality of the network directly affects their ability to address the most pressing business and digital transformation challenges. (By contrast, only 42% of underperformers share this sentiment.)

The underperformers in NTT’s survey are a mirror image of these overachieving organizations. Most CIOs and CTOs at these companies agree that networks play a vital role in delivering revenue growth. They also recognize business demands for increased speed, agility and innovation can only be satisfied by new operating models. And yet these organizations typically suffer from delayed upgrades, high levels of technical debt and poor visibility across the network.

The older the network is, the greater the chance of negative impacts on service delivery, customer satisfaction and the employee experience. Some 69% of the CIOs and CTOs surveyed by NTT say technical debt continues to accumulate. Asked to identify the risks generated by underinvestment, respondents most frequently pointed to classic effects of technical debt: inflated IT operational costs and limited availability of new services required for digital transformation.

For these enterprises, networks threaten to become a cross between a millstone and a minefield (slowing down progress and continually threatening to blow up in the face of network professionals).

In this hybrid and hyperconnected world where organizations need to deliver great employee and customer experiences, the network provides the fabric of the digital organization. NTT’s intelligent and secure Network as a Service enables a complete edge-to-cloud strategy, delivering a wide array of benefits: increased agility, reduced risk, greater flexibility, scalability, automation, predictability and control.

Given today’s high-performance hybrid environment, Matthew Allen, Vice President, Service Offer Management – Networking at NTT, suspects that the status quo is time-limited for underperforming enterprises.

“You can start to transform your business on the networks you have. However, as this business transformation drives a distribution of applications and business functions across many, diverse locations (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private cloud, etc.), a legacy network solution will not be able to keep pace with this change – it will become increasingly difficult for distributed applications and workloads to communicate effectively and securely, at the speed the business requires.”

NTT’s survey suggests organizations that delay network modernization run the risk of ending up in an unsustainable position – technical debt will continue to accumulate, downtime will occur as networks fail, and the increased operational complexity of stitching together and maintaining networks to support distributed workloads will eventually cause something to slip. Certainly, the commercial implications look unpleasant.

On this basis alone, it’s worth looking at NTT’s survey. It’s also worth asking yourself about your organization’s network strategy. Does it look like the strategy of a top-performing organization or an underperforming one? NTT’s analysis suggests that the difference between the two is more important than we might imagine. To learn more, read the 2022–23 Global Network Report from NTT – you can view the key findings infographic or download the complete report with access to the full data set.

Networking

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Higher education is entering a new era of data-driven insights, which promise to elevate both learner experience and institutional performance. The HE colleges and universities capable of collecting and leveraging data in a timely manner will not only boost student outcomes but also run their back-office operations in a significantly more effective and cost-efficient way – says Alex Pearce, Chief Technologist for Education at Softcat.  

Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS) and middleware solutions are the key to making sense of institutions’ complex mix of new and legacy systems, enabling them to create a powerful single-view of their data. With the help of IPaaS, colleges and universities are able to leverage exciting new technologies and use cases already revolutionising sectors such as finance, healthcare and retail. Here are the top five data-driven trends that HE institutions will be able to tap into with the help of IPaaS. 

Personalised learning experiences 

With IPaaS unlocking access to granular student data, institutions will be able to tailor their offering to the individual, guiding them towards success. They will also be able to build and leverage a unified data dashboard showing student and faculty key metrics, such as attendance levels, grades, resource usage etc. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can then be used to generate predictive analytics insights, nudging students towards beneficial behaviors.   

Smart buildings and campuses 

IPaaS can play a key role collating building data and creating a real-estate dashboard ensuring buildings are used as effectively and cost-efficiently as possible. These insights can ensure heating, energy use and occupancy levels are optimised – something that’s particularly important during the energy crisis, when energy prices are spiraling.  

Real-estate data can also be used alongside machine learning to foresee building issues and trigger predictive maintenance, fixing problems before they impact building availability. 

Next-generation remote learning 

The pandemic vividly highlighted the value of remote learning for HE institutions. And now, with society largely reopened, online teaching and meeting platforms continue to help to overcome physical distances. Thanks to IPaaS institutions can continue to extend their reach, connecting with students, speakers and networks locally, nationally, and internationally, making UK HE easily accessible globally. 

Student welfare 

Mental health is an increasingly important facet of HE, with institutions falling short at risk of putting their students at risk and suffering reputational damage as a result. IPaaS is the data link which can enable machine learning to spot worrying patterns in student behaviour and flag it to faculty in real time. 

Talent spotting  

IPaaS solutions can be used to create a holistic summary of student performance. When teamed with predictive analytics this approach can help faculty identify – in an objective manner – which students are best suited to further study. By surfacing granular data around student performance and behaviour, institutions are more likely to identify the candidates most likely to succeed.  

Conclusion 

With competition between HE institutions for budget and talent at an all-time high it has never been more important for schools, colleges and universities to find new, personalised ways to engage with students, streamline their operations and respond rapidly to new challenges and opportunities.  

Leading institutions now realise that fragmented technology is one of the biggest barriers to achieving their strategic goals. As a result, they are increasingly looking to best-in-class IPaaS data integration and automation platforms to help them leverage data from their legacy systems so they can evolve. Institutions that fail to harness the power of IPaaS face being left behind. 

For more information please download the following whitepaper: How higher-education institutions can reap the data dividend thanks to IPaaS

Cloud Management, Data Center Design, Data Integration, Data Management, Education Industry

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From the 6 – 18 of November, the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh will play host to the largest annual gathering on climate action the world over: COP27. This year’s event marks the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with COP27’s fundamental purpose to push the climate agenda forward with further development of the goals established in the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015.

This year’s conference will also be forced to contend with the fact the world has changed significantly in the year since COP26 in Glasgow. For the first time in more than 75 years a land war ravages Europe, with its consequences being felt around the globe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent the energy market into unprecedented levels of turbulence. Meanwhile, global economic stability — already precarious in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic — has been pushed even closer to the brink.

These problems sit alongside the fact the number of climate-induced natural disasters continues to rise, with this year’s floods in Pakistan just the latest tragic example. Since 1950, the global number of floods has increased by a factor of fifteen and the number of wildfires by a factor of eight, making such events increasingly expected but no less devastating for those impacted. COP27 is tasked with finding solutions that will make clear and tangible progress towards mitigating climate disaster, with no time to lose. Commitments and pledges may be sincere and well-meaning, but without action they are futile. The time has come to follow through.

The transition to LED lighting is the solution we need

The concurrent crises of climate change, spiraling energy markets, and global economic insecurity are distinct but interlinked problems. Transitioning from energy-wasteful conventional lighting to energy-efficient LED lighting offers a solution with potentially massive benefits for all three issues, both now and in the future.

The ability of LED lighting to increase energy efficiency cannot be overstated, in most cases slashing consumption by well over 50% when compared with conventional alternatives. This number can rise to as high as 80% with connected LED lighting systems that offer smart system management, monitoring, and control. Lighting accounts for 13% of all electricity usage worldwide, and two-thirds of professional light points around the world are still conventional. The potential energy savings that could be realised by a global switch to LED are colossal and could see lighting-related energy consumption drop to 8% globally by 2030, even while the total number of light points continues to rise.

You may see those numbers, appreciate the clear benefits, and recognise that transitioning to LED is a smart move, but convince yourself now’s not the time. As the current state of global finances means you should be looking to save money, not spend it. The thing is, if you really want to save money, then transitioning is your best bet. The savings generated – in both the immediate and long-term future – are such that the question isn’t whether you can afford to make the switch, but whether you can afford not to.

If every city and business in the world converted all their conventional light points to LED, the savings in electricity costs would total €177 billion per year. In the residential sector, upgrading just the EU27’s 1.7 billion conventional light points to ultra-efficient LEDs could effectively generate electricity savings of 34.1 TWh. That’s equivalent to the annual consumption of 9.4 million households, or the electricity needed to charge over 10 million electric vehicles. In monetary terms, it’s tantamount to annual savings of over €11 billion. Switching all light points in the 27 EU member states, residential and otherwise, to LED could save around €65 billion a year. And a mid-sized municipality would be looking at energy savings of over €26 million a year.

These are numbers that should be inspiring decision-makers at COP27 to take action. An effective energy-saving technology exists and is readily available—and the cost to implement it is covered by the reduction in energy costs it enables. Especially within regions where public funding for climate initiatives has been made available, such as the Green Deal in the EU or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act in the US, as well as others elsewhere.

But the LED transition is not just about energy or fiscal savings. Decarbonization has long been a vital part of the climate agenda and COP27 is no different, with 11 November officially labelled as Decarbonization Day within the conference. Scores of powerful nations have made net zero pledges, and upgrading conventional light points to LED is a way to make progress toward fulfilling these promises quickly.

Those who have made pledges need to act on them now if they are serious about seeing them through, with the potential for large-scale decarbonization at the mercy of their decisiveness. For example, if all businesses and cities were to transition, it would take more than 553 million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. That’s equivalent to the amount of carbon that 25 billion trees sequester in a year. Too high a scale to consider? Let’s think smaller. In a city of 200,000 inhabitants, switching all conventional lighting to LED could reduce CO2 emissions by 18,000 tons per year, the equivalent to the yearly absorption of almost 850,000 trees.

It is time for everyone to adapt

Changes need to be made to the current policies and approaches of most COP27 attendees — and soon — if we are to avoid disaster. The talk has already been talked: it’s time to walk the green walk. COP27 provides the perfect opportunity for key decision-makers to demonstrate the commitment to moving beyond the conversational stage. It’s no longer about whether action should be taken but about actually implementing large-scale changes to long-standing counterproductive patterns of behavior, on an institutional, national, and international level. These changes must be made in an equitable manner — global solutions to global problems — with developing nations as much a part of the energy transition as the more established global players.

Act now

COP27 is a chance for world and business leaders to take the next step in the green energy transition, to move from making promises to seeing them through. Transitioning to energy-efficient LED lighting is a proven solution that reduces carbon output and energy consumption in a cost-efficient way. Cities, businesses, and individuals need to work with reliable technology partners who have demonstrated their commitment to the sustainable cause and the viability of their solutions.

These are turbulent times, rife with economic and ecological uncertainty. But it’s in times of darkness that we most need light.

To find out more click here.

Green IT

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Since its beginnings in 1914 to what it is now as a global consultancy firm with nearly 30,000 employees,  Booz Allen Hamilton has been able to evolve through the ages by helping to redefine the industry through advancements in technology and sourcing the right talent. Brad Stone, who has been with the company for over 25 years but recently became its CIO in 2021, had deep knowledge of the brand, its structure and ambitions, but understood that in his new role, there was a lot to learn, especially where improvements could be made.

“It was interesting joining this team and becoming the CIO at an organization that I knew well,” he says. “But what I did see despite the tremendous talent was that service delivery was often fractured and not fully integrated to a set of outcomes, and at times driven by different corporate priorities that were all important, but not seamless against an integrated outcome. So we had great parts, but our sum was not greater than our parts.”

From this staring point, Stone hit the reset button, mapping out five core organizational principles that have accelerated growth and helped strengthen the business. Ongoing and unpredictable disruption also led to a focus on simplification with staff and customers, and has changed the way the IT team thinks about strategy and taking informed risks, with a focus on a DevSecOps lifecycle, for example, to pipeline things and get aligned to improve accountability and transparency.

“We defined a clearly set service catalog against an ITIL framework, and were able to set portfolio leads around the capabilities we’ve developed,” he says. “What it enabled us to do is get more of a centralized purpose to accelerate growth and enable business success, which ties back to the idea of attracting staff and giving them some autonomy or ownership while still being part of the greater good. You change the world one individual at a time, and the way we’ve organized it, I’ve seen that cultural feel.”

Stone recently spoke at a recent summit on Leading in Disruptive Times with Julia King, contributing editor at CIO, about key leadership methods to fuel success, and how being “client zero” has enabled Booz Allen to inspire and retain talent while continuously learning and embracing technology to build trusted relationships.

Here are some edited excerpts of that conversation. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On 5 organizational principles: It starts at the top with operational excellence—actually living it, not just saying it. So that’s accountability of what the metrics are, how the company is faring and celebrating overcoming hardships, like decommissioning something. I love to clean stuff up and when we turn off a service to simplify it, we make the other services we provide even better. Second, there’s having a resilient enterprise that is risk-informed. We have to recognize that things will go bad, and it’s about our ability to recover those. The third one ties back to providing innovative service and solutions to our users. If you don’t, people will find it for themselves and run it in your shadows. The fourth is about being a data-driven organization. We need to make sure we have a single source of truth across organizations. We have multiple platforms to run our business and to perform that, we need to not only have that central source of truth, but it needs to be future-proofed to scale with our organization. And the last one is we want to attract staff. We’re lucky to attract and retain some of the best in the industry, and we set the goal of being a premier organization for IT and cybersecurity professionals. So what we do across all five of these is hold ourselves accountable to them, drive metrics against them, and define critical success factors, and, again, celebrate it and tackle areas we need to improve.

On handling disruption: Disruption provides a lot of opportunities to rethink why we do things and how we do them. We are a professional services organization at our core due to trusted relationships. The pandemic challenged that because we were a culture that wanted to shake hands and let people know in person how we connected with them. And the disruption over the past couple of years has made us have to change that. We’ve had to embrace technology not only as an enabler, but ultimately as a foundation by which we build those trusted relationships. It has challenged us and changed our different clients. Fortunately, our people are unbelievably resilient. The other part is to have a core infrastructure team that can respond. But as we come out of the pandemic, that disruption has to lead to simplification and balancing of what we had with a remote hybrid model for our nearly 30,000 global employees, so it meets their needs. The key is to simplify that down so we can give them something to connect with their fellow employees, our clients, and their communities. If you’re able to identify some archetypes, look for the greatest good, and then handle those exception cases—as what we deem specialized services—it allows us to continue providing foundational services that are important to that connection. But budgets aren’t increasing, so you need to be efficient.

On leadership: Over the past few years, I think any CIO or technology leader has been marked by agility, capacity to learn new things, and taking informed risks, and the pandemic only accentuated those characteristics as a leader. Your ability to adjust to unplanned events, and your capacity to handle different demands has only been magnified through this. But one thing I’ve noticed is the need as a leader to simplify things down, whether that’s with your stakeholders and customers who are leveraging your services, or, most importantly, with your staff. Simplifying it down to them about what we do empowers our business. We’re fortunate to be challenged by our clients to solve complex problems, and running an institution like Booz Allen’s IT and cybersecurity is an amazing mission. So if I can simplify things down for our set of leaders, and then empower them in a culture of accountability, it makes you feel you’re part of a greater good. That’s a big reason why a lot of people join the company as it provides a calling to do something for the nation, community, and the globe. By leading that way and maintaining that agility and capacity, but simplifying down, it can be inspiring to our all our employees.

On innovating the IT culture: In the role before this at Booz Allen, I was in the Innovation Group, leading a lot of our enterprise cybersecurity and IT innovation, so I knew what products and services we had. So one of the first things I did as CIO was make ourselves what we call client zero. We leverage out solutions internally, like with a next-generation data lake that allows us to make data-driven decisions and not just go by the intuition that dominates large corporate cultures. In the nature of professional services, we constantly spin up and spin down new environments, consuming new data for our AI experts to solve, from healthcare missions to NAV security missions. They need an agile set of infrastructure that is able to support that, so we’re able to adopt that ourselves internally as client zero. It saves money and gives a feedback loop where we can rotate staff between our client delivery side and our internal business. I’m proof of that myself as somebody who spent many years doing client delivery, and now I’m enjoying a corporate role.

CIO, Innovation, IT Leadership

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Florida-based Apogee Executive Advisors consultancy specializes in corporate governance, technology risk management, and public & private board service, among other areas, and when Myrna Soto, the company’s founder and CEO, offers insight on how best to communicate with, and present to, the board of directors, people, especially technology leaders, tend to benefit, especially if the ambition is to ultimately become board members themselves.

“I have presented in the boardroom many times as the reigning executive in a variety of roles, and now I have the opportunity to be on the other side of the table to assist technology leaders like CIOs and CTOs who may be invited into the board to present,” says Soto, who has had many distinctions as a founder, CEO, board member, investor, former CIO and former CISO, among others. “The boardroom is becoming savvier to the impact that technology has on the business’ strategic outcomes, so CIOs and other tech leaders have the opportunity to demonstrate how impactful their work is to lead the technology, strategy, implementation, and execution for the company. And board members will want to understand the priorities, needs to endorse certain investments, and strategic advantages, whether it’s reinventing the delivery of a product or a service, or how data is used analytically for marketing purposes. At a macro level, board members also understand it’s hard for any industry or company not to be reliant on technology, and that gives a superior platform for technology leaders to be innovative and influential members of the management team in the boardroom.”

Building on that, as the expression goes, “Those who fail to prepare, prepare to fail.” Not only do those presenting to the board need to glean from previous presentations what level of detail the board understands about the technology landscape for the company, but boards expect CIOs to be up to date and aware of what technology initiatives are underway at competing companies, so any presentation has to thoroughly account for that as well. More often than not, says Soto, members serve on other boards so they’ll have many perspectives of different companies and different industries. “More often than not, they may make comparisons, so it’s important to be able to be in a position to respond,” she says. “It’s important to project confidence to not only know what is pertinent to your company, but how to be best positioned to succeed and execute differently than the competition.”

Soto recently spoke with John Gallant, enterprise consulting director with Foundry, about the evolving nature of how CIOs and technology leaders engage with the board of directors, and the tools needed to achieve best outcomes.

Here are some edited excerpts of that conversation. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On leveraging the board: Every boardroom is not equal. And when we say they are more tech-savvy, that comes with gradients. There are still board members, however, who aren’t technology experts or have the experience or depth to understand some challenges when it comes to technology adoption and changes. That’s not a criticism, but this is where CIOs and other technology leaders invited in the boardroom need to hone in on a skill to be able to present technical concepts in a very strategically placed business acumen so board members can make those connections. In some cases, the leader has an opportunity to either validate an assumption a board member has or change a perspective of how impactful a certain technology may or may not be. One of my favorites is being able to educate the board at the right level, whether they’re evolving an innovative platform or doing a large-scale refresh.

On preparing to present to the board: Study your board members. Get to know their backgrounds. It’s important to make certain connections to their experience and the content you’re providing so it allows them to connect the dots. So if you have a board member who used to be a leader in technology, that would be a great opportunity to build a relationship and a rapport. Be careful not to alienate board members either. Sometimes I’ve seen people who focus on one or two because they have a comfort level with the topic, or they believe their experience will allow them to understand it better, forgetting that some others may not follow as closely. That is a strong recipe for not getting invited back. You want to be a frequent presenter. And as a CIO, you’re running your own technology organization within an organization, which has many different functional components. Chances are you’re managing a balance sheet, so think of the financially related terms that will be important. Board member focus is about generating shareholder value, growth, and preserving the position of an organization, so you want to make those connections when you present. Put it all in highly strategic business terms.

On the dos and don’ts for CIOs: We live and breathe our profession and sometimes we have to stop using acronyms and technical terms, which are part of our day-to-day language managing technology teams. But be careful not to bring that into the boardroom. If you catch yourself, offer a nugget of knowledge. If you say, “ERP,” what does ERP really mean? You get an opportunity to educate the board without sounding condescending. Don’t assume your audience has the layer of detail that would make some of the concepts you present obvious. A lot of times, board members will just ask, “What did you mean by that?” and you have the opportunity to course correct. But if you have a chance to do it naturally, and provide that layer of perspective, it goes a long way. Also, if your corporate culture allows, it’s always wonderful to build relationships with board members outside the boardroom. If you have an opportunity, maybe one or two presentations in, have a sidebar conversation. Take advantage and what you’ll find is they end up becoming a good sounding board as you prepare for future presentations.

On becoming board members: What is important for CIOs to get an understanding about is the function of the board, why it exists, and its practices and principles of governance. It may sound obvious, but being able to execute on consent actions and formulate a consensus around decisions being made is important to understand. When you serve in the boardroom, you don’t work for the company, you’re not an employee of the company, but you represent the interests of shareholders and investors in the boardroom. Obviously, their goal is to help with strategic vision, to opine and lean on strategies and to approve large-scale investments and changes for the company. That all comes with a ton of governance principles.

CIO, IT Leadership

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By: Lars Koelendorf, EMEA Vice President, Solutions & Enablement at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

Can an enterprise CEO today be successful without having a strong relationship with the CIO and the corporate network?

The short answer is no. Technology today powers and enables so much of how businesses function. Given the pace of digitization, the corporate network, led by the CIO, is increasingly becoming a critical business decision center for the CEO within the broader context of running a large enterprise.

In particular, there are three points CEOs today must consider when examining the network and their relationship with the CIO.

1. Investing in the network is foundational to achieving business goals

Is there any department across the modern enterprise business that would not benefit from the ability to work better, faster, easier, smarter, cheaper, and more secure?

The COVID-19 pandemic has already proven again and again why digital transformation is now fundamental to business growth and survival, especially in the face of outside, unanticipated events severely impacting normal business operations.

Matching technology with how business engages key publics, from clients to the community to investors and beyond, allows employees to create higher quality work while producing more competitive products and services that keep pace with ever-evolving demands. It means empowering back-end functions to support the rest of the business better than before. Meanwhile, regardless of which department they belong to or where they choose to work, employees must have the best experience possible, without any technical roadblocks and complications that can stop them from delivering their best work. Otherwise, employees will and are seeking out that environment elsewhere. Indeed, many employees actually experienced very good connectivity while working from home during the pandemic – and now demand that same easy and seamless experience coming back into the workplace or while on the road.

The key to creating that effective work environment is ensuring the CIO makes clear to the CEO the value of automated systems, which not only includes streamlining operations, but eliminating human error, overcoming human limitations, and freeing up employees to focus on projects that drive real value. In short, with the right technology, CIOs can drive actionable insights from the deluge of data that a given company has been accumulating that support the CEO’s long-term vision and business goals.

Enterprise data has the potential to deliver significant cost savings, improve operational efficiency, and even unlock new business opportunities and revenue streams. But first, it needs to be stored, secured, sorted, and analyzed – all of which a great enterprise network can facilitate.

To unlock its full potential, CEOs need to work closely with their CIOs and other department heads to understand the exact impact that the network could have on every area of the business.

2. The network also plays a vital role in achieving sustainability goals

Sustainability is not just a strategic priority. For most companies around the world, sustainability has become the priority, given that it’s being driven both from the top down (by company boards, investors, and governments) and from the bottom up (by employees, the general public, and key communities affected by business operations). In essence, networking capabilities must align with corporate sustainability goals and initiatives to truly achieve its full potential.

The network plays an integral role in empowering enterprises to become more sustainable, to measure and prove that sustainability, and to build more sustainable products and services. Therefore, investing in the right network infrastructure should be at the top of any CEO’s agenda, and they will need to work in tandem with the CIO and other relevant department heads to achieve those aims.

3. A modern network can help the enterprise stay ahead of potential pitfalls

Given the rate of change and disruption, any CEO simply investing just enough in the network to keep operations moving has already lost the plot. The CEO instead must work closely with the CIO to anticipate future business needs, opportunities, and threats, outlining clear goals and corresponding initiatives that ensure the modern network is flexible and nimble enough to meet the challenges.

It used to be that if the network were down, employees could do other manual work while waiting for a fix. Today, however, if there are issues with the network, everything stops, from the factory floor to the storefront to the corporate headquarters. In that sense, the network is mission-critical to keeping the business running.

But the network has so much more potential than this – to help the business continually stay ahead of and be differentiated from the competition. The reason is an agile network creates the foundation for every area of the business to innovate, from IT to R&D and logistics.

With an agile network, the infrastructure is always ready to integrate, support, secure, and fund any new technological developments that might help the business to move the needle on its goals.

Creating Strong C-suite Connections

While this particular article has focused on the relationship between the CEO and the network, at the end of the day, the CEO must empower the CIO to be an advocate for the network and support all C-suite members to work together towards building one that helps them achieve both individual departmental and collective organizational goals.

For more on creating a modern, agile network, learn about Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform): https://www.arubanetworks.com/solutions/aruba-esp/

Networking

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To be a truly data-driven enterprise, organizations today must go beyond merely analyzing data. Rather, business experts and IT leaders must transform relevant data into compelling stories that key stakeholders can readily comprehend — and leverage to make better business decisions.

This vital skill is known as data storytelling, and it is a key factor for organizations looking to surface actionable information from their data, without getting lost in the sea of charts and numbers typical of traditional data reporting.

Following is a look at what data storytelling entails and how IT and analytics leaders can put it to work to make good on data’s decision-making potential.

What is data storytelling?

Data storytelling is a method for conveying data-driven insights using narratives and visualizations that engage audiences and help them better understand key conclusions and trends.

But that’s often easier said than done.

“Telling stories with data can be difficult,” says Kathy Rudy, chief data and analytics officer at global technology research and advisory firm ISG.

For Rudy, data storytelling begins with knowing your audience.

“Remember to start with who your main characters are, that is, the audience for your data story. What information is most important to them? Structure your data story so you anticipate the next question the audience will have by thinking like the reader of the story,” says Rudy, adding that, in her 20 years in benchmarking and data analytics, she has had to learn to tell a clear and concise story using data to validate ISG’s recommendations.

The first hurdle most data storytellers face is gaining acceptance for the validity of the data they present, she says. The best way to do this is to hold data validation and understanding sessions to get the question of data validity out of the way.

The goal of the data storyteller is to clear up all questions as to the source of the data, the age of the data, and so on, so that in subsequent views of the data, the storyteller isn’t continually defending the data, Rudy says.

“Don’t get overly technical or you will lose the audience,” she advises. “In the case of IT benchmarking, they don’t want to know about the technology stack, just that the data is relevant, secure, current, comparable, and accurate.”

Elements of data storytelling

Data storytelling consists of data visualization, narrative, and context, says Peter Krensky, a director and analyst on the business analytics and data science team at Gartner.

“With visualization, a picture is worth a thousand words,” he says. “How are you making the story visually engaging? Are you using a graphic or iconography? That doesn’t mean it can’t be a table or very dry information, but you’d better have a visual component.”

The narrative is the story itself — the who, what, where, why. It’s the emotional arc, Krensky says. “If it’s about sales forecasting for the quarter, are we doing great, or are people going to lose their jobs?”

Context is what the people hearing this story need to know. Why one sales representative is always outperforming all the other sales reps is an example of the context for a data story, Krensky says.

Grace Lee, chief data and analytics officer at The Bank of Nova Scotia (known as Scotiabank), says blending context and narrative requires a keen understanding of what makes a story compelling.

“The way that we think about stories, if we remove the data term, it needs a plot that you care about, it needs characters that you root for, and it requires a destination or an outcome that you believe in and aspire to,” she says.

Being able to put the data into context in the form of a narrative allows people to care more and to understand what the action is that comes out of it, Lee says. In addition to focusing on storytelling as a discipline, Lee’s team is also working to create more storytellers across the organization.

“The way we’re educating people around storytelling is really around action orientation, helping people create those narratives, providing more of the context, and allowing people to see the clear line between the data, the insight, and the action to come,” she says.

Lee sees the role of Scotiabank’s data and analytics organization as the storyteller for the enterprise because it’s only in the data that some of the insights about what customers need and want appear.

Key steps in data storytelling

Lars Sudmann, owner of Sudmann & Co., a Belgium-based consulting and management training network, offers insight into the steps that go into data storytelling.

Identify the ‘aha’ insights: One of the greatest pitfalls of data-based presentations is the “data dump.” Rather than overwhelm the audience with data and visualizations, CIOs and data analytics officers should identify one to three key “aha” insights from the data and focus on these. What are the surprising, absolutely key things one needs to know? Identify them and build your presentation around them, Sudmann says. Share the genesis story of the data: To tell a good story with data, a good starting point is the genesis, i.e., the origin of the data. Where does it come from? This is especially important when storytellers present data sets for the first time. Transform surprising turning points into engaging transitions: When storytellers present data and facts, they should share where the data/graphs/trendlines make “surprising” moves. Is there a jump? Is there a turning point? Doing so can provide compelling transitions to deeper analysis, for example: “Normally we would think the data does X, but here we see that it declined. Let’s explore why this happened.”Develop your data: One of the biggest issues in giving presentations today is that people throw heavy data on the screen and then play “catch-up,” with words, such as “This is a crowded slide, but let me explain.” “This might be difficult, but…” Instead, storytellers should develop their data step-by-step. “I am not a fan of fancy animations, but for instance in PowerPoint there is one animation that I recommend: the ‘appear’ animation,” Sudmann says. “With it one can harmonize what one sees and what one says and with that a data story can be built step-by-step.” Emphasize and highlight to bring your story to life: Once storytellers have identified the flow and key aspects of their data stories, it’s important to emphasize and highlight key points with their voices and body language. Show the data, point to it on screen, walk to it, circle it — then it comes to life, Sudmann says. Have a ‘hero’ and a ‘villain’: To make stories more engaging, data storytellers should also consider developing a hero, e.g., the “good tickets,” and a villain, e.g., “the bad tickets raised because of not reading the FAQs,” and then show their development over time, in different departments, as well as the “hero’s journey” to success, Sudmann advises. 

Data storytelling tips for success

Rudy is a firm believer in letting the data unfold by telling a story so that when the storyteller finally gets to the punch line or the “so what, do what” there is full alignment on their message.

As such, storytellers should start at the top and set the stage with the “what.” For example, in the case of an IT benchmark, the storyteller might start off saying that the total IT spend is $X million per year (remember, the data has already been validated, so everyone is nodding).

The storyteller should then break it down into five buckets: people, hardware, software, services, other (more nodding), Rudy says. Then further break it down into these technology areas: cloud, security, data center, network, and so on (more nodding).

Next the storyteller reveals that based on the company’s current volume of usage, the unit cost is $X for each technology area and explains that compared to competitors of similar size and complexity, the storyteller’s organization spends more in certain areas, for example, security (now everyone is really paying attention), Rudy says.

“You have thus led your audience to the ‘so what’ part of the story, namely, that there are areas for improvement,” she says. “The next question in your audience’s mind is mostly likely, ‘Why?’ And finally, ‘So what do we about it?’”

The rest of the story leverages a common understanding of the validity of the data to make recommendations for change and the actions necessary to make those changes, according to Rudy. Data in this story created the credibility necessary to establish a call to arms, a reason to change that is indisputable.

And taking the old adage “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” into consideration, it’s crucial for data storytellers to consider the medium various individuals are using to consume information and what times they’re accessing this information.

“The pandemic has definitely helped in the shift of allowing thought workers to work from home,” says Kim Herrington, senior analyst for data leadership, organization, and culture at Forrester Research. “And a lot of times you’re communicating with thought workers that are across the globe. So it’s important to think about the communication software that you’re using and the communication norms that you have with your team.”

Analytics, Data Science, ROI and Metrics

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Board directors like Jean Holley can be a CIO’s best friend or worst nightmare. A former CIO herself, Holley always reaches out to the CIO before board meetings to offer her advice on how to handle inevitable questions. “It’s amazing how many times they don’t take me up on it,” Holley says.

These CIOs, especially those new to the role, often come off as overly techie, out of touch with the business, or worse, out of their depth in the position, she says. On three different boards, directors have asked Holley if the company chose the right CIO, and three times her answer was no. Don’t be that CIO.

CIOs hold more influence than ever in the boardroom. The CEO and board may steer the ship, but they’re relying on the CIO’s radar to see what’s coming. Preparation is key and can make or break the relationship. Get ready for these questions and curveballs.

First, know your audience

Before meeting the board for the first time, it’s important to research the background of each board member and the other boards they’re on, says Gary Cantrell, former CIO and senior vice president of IT at manufacturing company Jabil, who spoke with his board quarterly.

“Most of the board members aren’t deeply versed in IT, but they know what’s important from reading the news or from what they’ve learned from other boards that they sit on,” Cantrell says. “If you follow those companies on your feed and read up on an incident before you get in front of the board, you can answer questions easy enough. If not, you have to dance as you go.”

1. ‘Are we vulnerable to current cyber threats?’

Cybersecurity remains a top board concern, especially given the war in Ukraine and ongoing global unrest. CIOs should always prepare for this loaded question without giving doomsday predictions or appearing overconfident.

“Prepared for cyber questions in the context of risk,” says Jay Ferro, chief information and technology officer at Clario. “Explain that the likelihood of a risk X happening is very low, but the impact could be high, so here’s what we’re doing to mitigate it,” Ferro says. “Have a conversation about where you aren’t as secure, too, but follow immediately with how you’re getting better, what your plan is, and how they can hold you accountable for getting better.”

Here, CIOs can help the board see improvement by reusing and updating performance graphs and charts that were presented at previous board meetings, so directors can see progress, he adds.

Vulnerability isn’t the only cyber-related question CIOs should be prepared to address. Ferro says he was put on the spot many times with the question, “Are we spending enough on cybersecurity?”

“You always want to spend more, but your CEO is in the room, and you have to be very careful about your answer,” Ferro says. “You don’t want to throw your CEO under the bus.”

On the flip side, the current economic climate has some boards asking, “Can you do this more cheaply?” says Alexander Lowry, host of the podcast “Boardroom Bound.” Typically the answer is no if the company wants to remain well-defended or needs to retain talent, he says. “Time, cost, and quality form the triangle of balance,” he adds, and CIOs must explain the importance of all three factors.

Directors who sit on several boards may also inquire about the security chain of command in the organization, Holley says. Because of this, CIOs are often asked, “Should the CISO report to the CIO or to someone else?”

“About 90% of CIOs will say yes, I want it,” Holley says. “But if you’re a technology-based company and you develop technology for a living or maybe in the security space, it should not be under the CIO. The board prefers the checks and balances of two different leaders in this case, she says.

2. ‘Are we investing in the right technology that aligns with our strategy?’

The board wants assurances that the CIO has command of tech investments tied to corporate strategy. “Demystify that connection,” Ferro says. “Show how those investments tie to the bigger picture and show immediate return as much as you can.”

Global CIO and CDO Anupam Khare tries to educate the board of manufacturer Oshkosh Corp. in his presentations. “My slide deck is largely in the context of the business so you can see the benefit first and the technology later. That creates curiosity about how this technology creates value,” Khare says. “When we say, ‘This project or technology has created this operating income impact on the business,’ that’s the hook. Then I explain the driver for that impact, and that leads to a better understanding of how the technology works.”

Board members may also come in with technology suggestions of their own that they hear about from competitors or from other boards they’re on. So CIOs should also be prepared to answer the question, “Should we be using the same technology as company X?”

Avoid the urge to break out technical jargon to explain the merits of new cloud platforms, customer-facing apps, or Slack as a communication tool, and “answer that question from a business context, not from a technology context,” Holley says. “[The answer] depends on how the business is doing and where you are competitively. Are you trying to be a leader or a fast follower” in the digital space?

It’s also wise to prepare a list of three areas that you would invest in if capital were available, Holley says. “That’s a key question to always have a good answer to in case the business is throwing off more cash or somebody isn’t spending as much capital,” she says. “For instance, if we throw $5 million now at this active project, we could pull in this ROI in six months. It may not be IT-related either. If we’re looking to pull in that acquisition in Q1 of next year, why don’t we pull it in Q4 this year because people have the bandwidth.”

Holley had a similar short list of projects to slow or stop if the business was contracting or the company had a rough quarter and needed to pull back. Top contenders were projects where the business is not engaging enough, or those the business can’t bring the right head count to make it move faster, she says.

3. ‘How are you retaining and attracting tech talent?’

Board members read about a worldwide IT talent shortage and they’re asking CIOs what they’re doing to develop talent in-house, and how they’re retaining workers, Cantrell says. They’re also asking about attrition rates and how you’re attracting new talent. Are you only offering higher salaries or other perks?

4. ‘Should we be looking to automation to fill hiring gaps?’

Without enough qualified workers, some board members may also ask about automation or robotics as an alternative, Lowry says. “The question might be, ‘Since we can’t get enough human beings to do these things anyway, could we do it more efficiently with automation? Not just today, but for the medium or long term would it make the organization more resilient or help us operate more cheaply?’” CIOs should prepare a list of what parts of the business could be or should be automated, Lowry says.

5. ‘How are you cultivating the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive tech team?’

With the increasing emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as a key workplace objective and productivity driver, CIOs should also be prepared to describe their DEI initiatives, including how they are going about sourcing for this talent, such as partnerships with organizations that can help, Ferro says.

These types of corporate responsibility topics may also include sustainability questions, he adds. “What are you doing to run a more sustainable technology organization — whether that’s reducing your data center footprint or moving to the cloud,” he says.

6. ‘What should we be concerned about that’s not on our radar?’

The board is relying on your radar to help them shape business strategy. A crisp top-three list should start things off. “This is not an invitation to go apocalyptic or to overtalk or overexplain,” Holley says.

“I would always pre-think an answer internally and externally,” Holley says. “I start with something like, ‘Externally there’s an opportunity to grow revenue by x%.’ Or I would ask, ‘Do you know what our competitors are doing?’ And I would expand on that. Or I would start with, ‘The competitor we don’t even see today is probably doing this.’”

Instead of elaborating on each idea, she would follow up with, “Would you like to know more?” The board chair or a committee chair would usually say yes or want to follow up at a later time.

Dealing with the unexpected

If any question comes out of left field that you aren’t prepared to answer, never make up the answer, Ferro says. “Be prepared to say, ‘I would like to come back to you on that, or just say, ‘That’s a great question. Generally, it’s on our radar. Let’s do a separate call on that.’”

Preparation can pay off big time, Cantrell says. “It’s always the first impression. If you can get off on a good foot in the first three meetings, life gets a lot easier. If not, it gets to be a challenge.”

CIO, IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Consumers now expect personalised customer service experiences, whereby a website or app retains personal details in order to deliver tailored messaging, offers, and relevant products. Meeting these digitally-driven demands is crucial if brands want to keep pace and maintain their competitive edge.

Businesses, after all, are built on the success of their customer service, yet ensuring a truly personalised customer journey is no easy feat in the post-pandemic age. With a new generation of customers looking to operate on emerging channels – such as social media platforms and digital messaging services – businesses across every industry need to utilise their customer data to modernise the contact centre experience, both for the customer and the agents who manage customer questions or concerns.

Organisations which can’t meet these expectations risk losing or alienating customers.

While businesses have sped up digital transformation journeys as a result of the pandemic, many are still forced to contend with legacy technology and processes, frustrating data silos within their organisation, and data protection concerns, which can make providing a personalised customer experience frustrating and costly.

I: The customer service revolution

Historically, customers have expected basics like quality service and fair pricing, but modern customers have much higher expectations that include personalised interactions and connected experiences across digital channels.

The importance of offering such an experience can’t be downplayed in today’s digital-first business landscape. Microsoft data shows[1] that a positive customer experience can lead to a 10% to 15% boost in sales conversion rates. However, consumers not only want a positive experience, 80% want it personalised.

This means personalisation is no longer optional. It’s expected that consumers will continue to want personalised experiences for the long haul. Not only does make them feel more valued, but it, in turn, inspires greater brand loyalty.

 “Hyper-personalisation”

Customer expectations don’t just stop at personalisation, as many consumers increasingly reliant on digital interactions are now demanding “hyper-personalisation”.

Traditional personalisation focuses on personal and transactional information such as name, organisation, and purchase history; for example, including the first name of a customer in the subject line of an email. Hyper-personalisation, on the other hand, is more complex and takes into consideration behavioural and real-time data such as browsing habits, in-app actions, and engagement data. Making use of this data can help organisations engage in more contextualised communication with customers, and help tailor products, services and experiences according to their wants and needs.

Netflix’s personalised recommendations engine, for example, draws data from multiple real-time sources. The company tracks: how the users interact with a show or movie; how long they watch it; whether they rewind, fast forward or stop watching and, if so, at what point.

There are numerous benefits to hyper-personalisation, both for the consumer and the organisation offering it. For the former, it saves time and eliminates the problem of feeling overwhelmed with options. For businesses, delivering hyper-personalised experiences to the customer allows them to tailor their marketing efforts at the individual level, which ultimately can boost revenue.

A new generation of customer

The growing demand for personalised customer experiences is being driven by a new generation of customers. Millennials – who make up almost a fifth of the population – are the first generation to have spent their entire adult lives with access to technology, such as smartphones and the internet. They have witnessed the positive effects these technologies can have on people’s lives, which has resulted in the most tech-savvy generation that values accessibility and convenience.

This reliance on digital services has further escalated as a result of the pandemic, which has seen new channels emerge for customer services. Digital messaging, for example, has grown faster than any other channel within the last year and is transforming how customers interact with brands. Digital natives flocked to messaging channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter Direct Messages to engage with businesses, as well as chatbots.

The reason lies in the convenience of messaging. Connecting with businesses through messaging doesn’t interrupt people’s schedules, and enables customers to get their issues resolved while doing other things, be it while in a work meeting or while working from home. Ultimately, messaging provides a faster, more efficient customer experience.

Importance of evolving

The importance of evolving customer experience has never been more important. Not only are we facing a new generation of customers with greater digital demands, but this same generation also has more choices than ever before as a result of an ever-widening choice of goods and services.

As a result, customers have become more demanding and expecting more, empowered by social networks and digital devices that are increasingly dictating how they engage, which can make it harder for businesses to keep up. They expect organisations to connect with them wherever they are, easily and securely, with an understanding of their individual needs.

Cloud and AI enable agility

Customer service tools have evolved greatly over the past few years as a result of big data, the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. They have become vital components in enabling a next-generation customer experience as organisations seek to make holistic changes quickly, with limited to no downtime, and scale resources to deal with the unexpected.

For example, AI can help organisations use data to drive business insights quickly, make decisions faster, and become more agile. Using AI will also help optimise processes and streamline operations.

Since the pandemic, 73% of customers expect to continue to incorporate different brands they’ve tried into their routinesIncreasing retention rates by as little as 5% could increase sales by over 25%.A positive customer experience can lead to a 10% to 15% boost in sales conversion rates, but consumers not only want a positive experience, 80% want it personalised.

II. Challenges faced in delivering hyper-personalised experiences

Technical debt

In many industries, businesses have significantly outgrown their IT environment. Some, for example, remain steadfastly off the cloud, making it difficult to leverage AI and machine learning capabilities. Leading experts discussed these challenges at a recent CIO roundtable hosted by Microsoft.

“Legacy businesses, trying to do this stuff is sometimes a different challenge to ones who are born in the cloud,” said Rob Smithson, who is head of business applications for Microsoft UK, said at the event.

For some organisations, the issue of technical debt came to light during the pandemic. As consumers rapidly shifted to digital services, this showed up structural weaknesses that negatively impacted the customer experience. For others, it revealed disorganised data architecture that led to incomplete or inaccessible analytics. Such data is vital for informing business strategy and enabling personalised experiences.

In a bid to overcome this debt, new issues can arise too. Organisations can find themselves rushing to develop and add new features, often making temporary trade-offs along the way, which can result in yet more technical debt that puts a strain on resources.

That’s why it’s critical that an organisation’s technology stack is built with a unified approach rather than simply reacting to customer expectations with one-off, siloed fixes. Technical debt isn’t inherently bad, but if it’s not properly managed, it can weigh heavily on an entire business – not just the IT department.

The back-end technology shapes the overall customer experience, which is why technical debt can get in the way of a seamless customer experience.

Data silos

Personalisation requires vast amounts of good data. But sometimes a company strands data in a silo, an isolated storage place inaccessible to the rest of the organisation. Similarly, data silos can occur when data is sectioned or compartmentalised in such a way that it is kept separate from other data assets, making it difficult to leverage for decision making and to create a complete picture of the customer journey.

These silos often arise from organisational silos – when solutions are designed in isolation and not with a common, coordinated goal. While it might seem logical for an IT team to use different systems and processes than the customer service team, and for the product team to use another set of tools altogether, this fragmented approach can create challenges when the company tries to deliver a personalised customer experience. 

Customers, after all, see a business as a singular entity and expect a consistent experience, no matter which department they are dealing with.

“I think we’ve learnt a lot during the pandemic, such as how important it is that our systems work more collaboratively with each other,” said a representative from the travel industry at the Microsoft CIO roundtable. “We’ve now got a really different kind of strategy about how we integrate our systems, and it’s much more cohesive.”

“It’s all about consolidation and getting a single view of the customer, whether they come in physically or whether they come in via the website,” said another attendee at the roundtable. “So it’s really a case of trying to make sure we can get as  much information to them as possible. We’re trying to make sure our systems talk to each other, and that seems to be the biggest challenge at the moment.”

Distributed workforce

Consumer habits aren’t the only thing that has changed due to the pandemic. The way most organisations function has too, with employees now splitting their time between the home and the office as a result of the widespread shift to remote working. Microsoft data shows that in 2022, hybrid work has increased seven points year-over-year (to 38%)[2], and 53% of people are likely to consider transitioning to a hybrid working model in the year ahead.

Not only has it become clear that hybrid working is here to stay, but for many organisations, it’s hit home that many pre-pandemic systems and strategies are simply no longer viable in the long term. For example, if information is not easily shared within a business, then it is difficult to harness a holistic and up-to-date view of customer interactions. That makes difficult to know precisely where each customer is in their engagement journey.

Other difficulties have also emerged as a result of having a distributed workforce. Some see a lack of communication as a big challenge to delivering effective customer service from home, while others have seen a lack of training as an issue in getting to grips with new technologies and systems.

Cost

Another hurdle for businesses looking to deliver personalised customer experiences is cost. Organisations suffering from technical debt might believe a “rip and replace” strategy is the only option, when in fact this would be unnecessary – not to mention costly and disruptive. Rather, it’s important that businesses get the balance right. The advent of AI means there are tools that will work with existing systems, and effectively collecting and making use of customer data doesn’t necessarily require brand-new systems.

Businesses instead need to think about getting the balance between what things can be automated and how they can leverage the power of AI and automation to help drive customer service.

It’s also important to remember that taking these steps can potentially increase revenue. Personalisation can deliver increased brand loyalty, but it has also been shown to drive impulse purchases and lead to fewer returns.

“We try and think top down ‘what’s the key data and how do we enable that data from an enterprise perspective, rather than on a case by case basis?’ said a representative from the IT industry.

III. Connecting lines of business while remaining secure

Another obstacle businesses face is balancing personalisation with data privacy. Meta’s recent data privacy lawsuit[3], in which the company was forced to pay $90M for its use of proprietary plug-ins to track users’ internet browsing on third-party sites, shows how serious the implications can be.

The new generation of consumers are more tech-savvy than ever before, which also means they value data privacy and transparency with utmost importance. A recent study has shown that 86% of consumers “care about data privacy” and want more control, and 79% of consumers are willing to invest time or money to better protect their privacy[4].

Organisations also have to ensure they are compliant with various data privacy regulations. Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires businesses to have the customer’s consent before they can capture, store or process any of their personal data. This means organisations must be prepared to answer questions about how, why, and when your it collects data from customers.

While this helps to meet the needs of privacy-conscious consumers, the challenge with improved privacy measures is that data is at the core of any great personalised experience. Unless you know something about your customer, you cannot truly personalise an experience in any channel – on your website, in your mobile app, through your email campaigns, or in your advertising.

“Our interpretation of data security rules are quite severe,” said one representative from the IT sector. “So therefore with some solutions, if data is not encrypted, we can’t use it. How do you how do you get to this heightened level of data security both with the data at rest and in transit? It’s proving a bit of a blockage for some of our work.”

“We started our transformation programme just before the pandemic,” said another representative from the travel industry. “We’re looking at chatbots, and we’re looking at speech analytics. The slowest part to mobilise has been our data stream because of some very explicit regulation. My challenge has not been to embrace the tools, it has been understanding the data as a result.”

While personalisation and privacy may seem hopelessly at odds, new technologies have made it possible for businesses to achieve both and thrive

IV. How to create the contact centre of the future

For most organisations, meeting customer expectations for hyper-personalised, secure interactions means improving the contact centre experience, both for customers and the agents who manage customer questions or concerns. Enhancing the customer experience requires advanced AI, automation, and security in the cloud while continuing to draw value from existing investments.

AI is fundamental to the success of the contact centre, can deliver personalised experiences, and can help organisations overcome many other challenges. It enables brands to connect with customers securely on voice and digital channels, reduce fraud, coach live agents, and automate the post-call wrap-up.

For those interactions that require a more sensitive or human approach, AI can serve to complement and augment human agents.

The cloud, too, is a vital component for a successful contact centre strategy as organisations need the ability to make holistic changes quickly, with limited to no downtime, and scale resources to respond to the unexpected.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help your organisation digitally transform your customer service by enabling omnichannel, personalised and seamless experiences.
Our platform enables you to transform all aspects of your customer service, from assisted and self-service channels, augmented with conversational virtual assistants, to a single agent desktop providing a single view of your customer that empowers your agents to deliver first time resolution.

Collaboration is also key in today’s modern hybrid working environment.  That’s why with Microsoft Teams, we’re empowering your service agents to deliver faster resolutions by getting to the right person within your organisation faster.

Click here for more information about how Microsoft can help your business deliver the contact centre of the future.

Download our latest e-guide: Five Keys to Future-Proofing Your Customer Service Success and discover insights on how your company can ensure the best possible customer service experience in an ever-evolving business landscape.

[1] https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/dynamics365/bdm/2022/05/04/how-to-foster-customer-loyalty-through-personalized-experiences/

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/great-expectations-making-hybrid-work-work

[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/metas-facebook-pay-90-million-settle-privacy-lawsuit-over-user-tracking-2022-02-15/

[4] https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/doing_business/trust-center/docs/cisco-cybersecurity-series-2021-cps.pdf

Microsoft, Microsoft 365

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

What is vendor management?

Vendor management helps organizations take third-party vendor relationships from a passive business transaction to a proactive collaborative partnership. While working with IT vendors can help ease the burden on IT, it also raises concerns, especially around data, risk, and security. A sound IT vendor management strategy can help organizations determine which vendor best fits the company’s needs while keeping in mind relevant features, price, availability, risk and security, and compliance regulations.

As most organizations rely on multiple third-party vendors, complexities compound and juggling many vendor relationships can quickly overwhelm an already-busy IT department. Plus, to ensure the best service, businesses should avoid falling into a trap where they stick with current vendors out of ease and convenience, especially if the service, price, or features aren’t exactly what the company is looking for.

Instead, establishing a dedicated vendor management practice can help keep your organization and your vendors on task after the initial contract is signed, and help establish processes for continually evaluating vendor performance to ensure the relationship remains beneficial. Building strong relationships with vendors creates loyalty and reliability in the supply chain, and can help companies ensure they are delivering the best products and services possible.

Benefits of vendor management

Left unmanaged, vendor partnerships can quickly fall behind. But by establishing a point-person who is focused on managing that vendor relationship, a strong dynamic partnership can be formed. Building that relationship and foundation is one of the main goals and benefits of vendor management. Establishing and maintaining vendor management best practices can help save the company money, time, and resources.

Other benefits of an effective vendor management process include the following:

Creating more choices for your organization and finding better choices to create a vendor strategy that best suits the company’s budget and needs.Choosing between multiple vendors can create bidding wars, giving your company better rates and prices.Building stronger relationships with vendors will improve collaboration and communication when implementing technology or outsourcing resources.Vendor management can better support IT governance, helping organizations keep a close eye on compliance and risk management.With a strong vendor relationship, businesses can quickly identify any vendor issues before they become a bigger problem.Vendor management enables your organization to remain proactive instead of reactive by staying on top of vendor performance and efficiency.

Vendor management skills and responsibilities

Successful IT vendor management requires a solid base of technical knowledge. IT vendor managers must understand the intricacies of each technology, process, software, or tool outsourced to a third party. But it’s also a role that requires strong soft skills to communicate with vendors and to maintain those relationships.

The role of vendor management will vary by organization, depending on what products and services it creates. But for every company, vendor management requires researching, communicating with, and deciding on a specific vendor to meet organizational needs. You may have to renegotiate contracts, find the best deals, deliver comparisons between products to executive leadership, manage long-term relationships with vendor contacts, and keep an eye on how relationships evolve.

While the role of vendor management might fall under the realm of IT managers or IT operations managers, companies that work with a wide array of vendors often take the extra step to create an IT vendor management office (VMO) to oversee all vendor relationships. This department helps guide the organization through RFP creation to final implementation and helps IT leaders stay on top of vendor relationships with regular performance evaluations.

Some companies might not need an entire department for vendor management, but still want a dedicated internal role for vendor management. By hiring one or two people solely focused on managing vendor relationships, companies can ensure they’re getting the best deals, working with the right vendors, and staying on top of the latest technology. It also prevents vendor management from falling to the wayside, allowing contracts to expire or relationships to fizzle out.

Vendor management software

Vendor management tools and software are available to help organizations manage many vendor relationships at once. These tools can help IT leaders and vendor managers keep notes on different products, costs, services, and contract details.

IT vendor management tools and software can be useful for something as simple as keeping track of vendor contact information, phone numbers, and email addresses. Other tools may go as far as to deliver detailed reports on the cost-benefit analysis of certain contracts. They’re also useful for the research phase, as many also offer reviews and ratings on vendors or even offer lists of preferred vendors.

According to Capterra, the most popular and well-known vendor management software tools include:

A1 TrackerC1RiskContractor ComplianceDigital Purchase OrderGatekeeperOurRecordsPayEmPrecoroPromena e-SourcingProcurementExpress.comProquraSimpleVMSTandem SoftwareTikkitTorii

Vendor management job description

Vendor management jobs include roles such as IT vendor manager, recruiting vendor manager, IT project manager, IT technical project manager, and vendor business relationship owner, among others. Vendor management is also a skillset often required for roles such as IT manager and IT operations manager.

While the job description for vendor management roles will vary depending on the role and company, there are some general expectations you can prepare for. Vendor management jobs typically require the following:

Researching vendors and managing vendor relationshipsNegotiation and communication skillsAbility to work with external partners and suppliersUnderstanding of how to align service delivery needs with business goalsA willingness to work against KPIsAbility to change or develop new processes for managing vendorsExecuting contracts and navigating contract renewalsMaintaining compliance on terms and conditions

Vendor management salary

The average salary for an IT vendor manager is $130,183 per year, according to data collected by PayScale. Reported salaries range from $51,000 to $147,000 per year, with an average yearly bonus of $15,484.

Vendor management certifications

There are certifications you can earn to validate your knowledge with vendor management, including certifications specifically focused on risk assessment, contract management, and relationship management.

Available certifications include:

Certified Third Party Risk Assessor (CTPRA)Certified Third Party Risk Professional (CTPRP)Compliance Education Institute: Vendor Management Certification (CRVPM)International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM) Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) certificationSupplier Relationship Management (SRM) Certification Program

Vendor management education and training

There is a wide range of courses available, both online and in person, that you can take to develop or brush up on IT vendor management skills, including:

Global Knowledge Vendor Management Training courseInternational Associate of Information Technology Asset Managers (IAITAM) Vendor Management Advanced Study courseInternational Computer Negotiations (ICN) Cloud contracting courseInternational Computer Negotiations (ICN) IT contracting boot campPM College Vendor Relationship Management courseThe Training Associates (TTA) Vendor Management trainingIT Leadership, IT Strategy, Outsourcing