-: Welcome, everyone,
and welcome to our webinar today
on "Applications Priorities 2023".
In our webinar today,
we will be exploring the five priorities
that can improve on capabilities needed
to meet the ambitions of your organization.
So, today we'll cover three main themes or objectives
for the webinar today.
For one, we wanna review the application motivators,
who are pushing organizations to improve and innovate.
We wanna learn the concepts and drivers
of the five 2023 applications priorities.
As well as we wanna make sure
that we're setting up ourselves for next steps,
because we're only gonna be scratching the surface
of our priorities today,
and we wanna make sure that we provide you
with the right information
as well as a call out to our normal research and reports,
so then you can definitely go and learn some more.
So, first off, if you don't know who Info-Tech is,
Info-Tech has of course been helping CIOs
and their teams evolve from firefighters
to innovation champions.
We produced unbiased and relevant research tools
to really help our IT leaders make strategic, timely,
and well-informed decisions
that really are intended to drive more business value.
Our data-driven research really helps enable IT leaders
to objectively measure success,
develop an impactful strategy,
as well as improve performance year over year.
Each year we invest significant effort
in a bunch of our library of good practice tools,
templates, training materials,
and provide step-by-step methodologies
that are proven to accelerate projects
and really transform IT departments.
So, let's just make sure we get a little bit
of housekeeping items before we get started.
So, all members of this webinar are muted, right,
to help make sure that we can hear myself
as well as my partner clearly as we present content.
I'd also like to encourage you
to post any questions, comments, technical challenges
in the Q and A section,
which you should see in the top right of your screen.
We'll also be monitoring the Q and A.
And we'll try to answer some questions
at the end of the session.
Lastly, we want to let you know
that we will be sending all registrants a copy
of the webinar slides,
as well as a recording of this webinar in a few days.
So, who are our presenters today?
So, my name's Andrew.
I will be the primary presenter today.
And I am a research director in the application development
and the portfolio management research team.
Much of my focus these days have really been
on business manage applications,
or colloquially, citizen development,
low and no-code development,
robotic process automation, or RPA,
business process management technologies,
as well as the various different types
of critical foundational practices really needed
to support them, like the SDLC, business IT collaboration,
and application portfolio management.
However, I also do have one of my colleagues on the line.
Vince, may you please introduce yourself.
-: For sure. Thanks, Andrew.
Hi, everyone.
My name's Vince Mirabelli.
I'm also a member of the application development practice
at Info-Tech.
I am a principal research director in the area.
And my area of focus of late has been
in the requirements business analysis,
little bit of product and agile,
but that has been my focus for my time at Info-Tech.
So, really excited to be a part of this conversation.
And back to you, Andrew.
-: Thank you very much, Vince.
We would also like to let you folks know
that we have someone from our IT team on, Nadine,
who's on our call today,
and he'll be on hand to help out
with any technical matters that come up.
And we'll do our best and their best
to try to resolve any of the issues that do come up.
Alright, so we all know, right,
the applications are the engines of the business.
And we need to keep them relevant and modern,
no questions about that.
However, we know the economics,
social regulatory conditions
really change the livelihoods,
businesses and marketplaces.
And modern tools and technologies have acted as lifelines,
right, by minimizing operating and delivery costs,
and in the process,
establishing a strong foundation for growth and maturity.
Well, as organizations continue
to strengthen business continuity,
disaster recovery, system resilience,
activities such to simply keep the lights on
we are seeing are just not enough,
and we wanna be more pragmatic in the prioritization
and planning of our application initiatives,
and really use our technologies and current practices
as a good foundations for growth.
With that said,
we wanna see if how we can actually accommodate some
of the prominent priorities we've been seeing
in the years within our strategy
so that we can really kind of take hold
and drive towards that business value
that we mentioned earlier.
So, in our published applications priorities report
for this year,
we will explore five priorities
for emerging and leading edge technologies and practices
that can really improve on the capabilities needed
to meet the ambitions of your organization.
One of them is digital experience, short form DX,
and that's really
about delivering valuable user, customer, employee,
and brand experiences through digital technologies.
We'll explain a little bit more about what those things are.
We also see intelligent automation
as another priority, right?
This is really
about extending automation practices and technologies
and capabilities with AI, artificial intelligence,
and ML, machine learning.
We also recognize
that there are some of the common challenges
that we definitely see more of an issue,
that's within the industry right now,
and that is, for example, proactive application management.
This is really about strengthening application
to prevent and minimize the impact of future issues.
So, taking a very proactive approach
so then we can prevent any significant issues from happening
in the future.
We also want to,
we also do see that multisource systems.
So this is where we are managing an ecosystem
of applications of technology,
composing of in-house, outsource,
as well as a broad range of vendor provided solutions.
And of course, another priority is
that we have identified is
the digital organization as a platform, or D-O-A-A-P,
or DOaaP, as I meant to call it.
And that here is about really creating
a common digital interface
to access to all of the products and services
within the organization as well.
So, within this webinar,
we will be briefly discussing each of the priorities.
However, like I mentioned,
we're only gonna be scratching the surface here.
And if you'd like to learn more
in terms of what are some of the motivators
behind these priorities,
some of our research and blueprints
that can help you kind of get these priorities
up and running,
please visit our website and download the report.
So, let's just get this thing started
with digital experience.
So, delivering valuable digital experiences requires
the adoption of good management and governance
and operational practices
to really accommodate stakeholder, employee, customer,
and end user experiences.
So, technologies are chosen based on what best enables,
delivers and supports these expectations.
But what is digital experience, right?
We define digital experiences as interaction
between a user and an organization
through digital products and services.
And then we'll describe a little bit
what our digital products and services, those attributes.
But we identify them as tools, systems, devices, resources
that gather, store, process data,
are continuously modernized,
and embody those 12 attributes,
which we'll describe shortly.
And from our perspective,
digital experiences can really be broken down
into four distinct perspectives.
For the first one, it's the customer experience.
So, this is really the immediate perceptions
of the transactions and interactions experienced
through customer's journeys,
and the use
of the organization's digital products and services.
We also have the end user experience,
and these are really the user's emotions, beliefs,
psychological and physical responses that occur
before, during, after interacting
with a digital product or service.
We have brand experience,
and this is really about the broader perceptions,
thoughts, feelings and actions,
the public associate
with the organization's brand and reputation,
or its products and services.
Brand experiences, of course, evolves over time,
as customers continuously engage with the brand.
Then finally, we have the employee experience.
And this is really
about the satisfaction and experience of an employee
through their entire journey within the organization,
from recruitment to the hiring to their departure.
How an employee embodies and promotes the organization,
brand and culture can really affect their performance
and trust, respect, and drive to innovate and optimize.
So, all of these things need to be accommodated
as part of a digital experience.
And we, once we are building up our practices,
our capabilities, that sort of thing,
we have to make sure that we accommodate each
of these various different types of perspectives.
So, why is digital experience really critical
for business growth and maturity?
We have seen a good digital experience
has become a key differentiator
that really kinda gives organizations an advantage
over their competition or even their peers.
So, shifts in working environments,
employee, customer and stakeholder expectations,
as well as the advancements in modern technologies,
have really raised the importance
of adopting and transitioning
to more digital processes and tools
to really stay relevant,
as well as responsive
to changing business and technology conditions.
Application teams are absolutely critical
to ensuring the successful delivery
and operation of these processes and tools.
However, we know,
unfortunately they're often under resourced and challenged.
Like, for example, as part of a Sierra 2021 report,
7% of both business and IT responders think
IT has the resources needed to keep up
with transformation initiatives and meet deadlines.
Only 7%.
But what really makes digital experience possible are
of course those products and services that support it.
So, let's kind of briefly describe what these things are.
So, digital products and services really do share
a common set of attributes.
One, they are fit for purpose.
So, of course the functionalities are designed
and implemented for the purpose
of satisfying those end user needs.
They are a course user centric,
so end users see the product or the service as rewarding,
engaging, intuitive, and emotionally satisfying.
So, they actually do wanna come back towards it.
They are adaptable
so they can be quickly tailored
to meet changing end user and technology needs.
With of course, those reusable and customizable components.
They are accessible.
So it is available on demand
and on the preferred device or interface
of the end user themselves.
As well as we've been seeing it
as a very seamless experience across any devices
or any interface that they're using.
They are as well private and secured.
So, the end user's activities are,
and data are protected from unauthorized access.
They are of course informative and insightful.
So, the product delivers consumable,
accurate, trustworthy, real-time data.
That's of course important to the end user.
There is seamless application connection.
So, this is about the product or the service,
really kind of facilitates the direct interactions
with one or more other products
through an uninterrupted user experience.
So, there's no pogo sticking or jumping back and forth.
It's just seamless as just one continuous experience.
As well as relationship and network building.
So, the products and services really enables
and promotes a connection and interaction with other people
as well as with the organization itself.
So, I wanna pose a question to Vince here.
What have you seen that really makes digital products
and services really unique and different,
compared to some of the other products and services
that we've been seeing?
-: Yeah, that's a good question, Andrew.
So, I think the one thing about digital versus, you know,
other types of products or channels
or ways of accessing a business or an organization,
is how accessible they are.
Digital products are available 24/7, 365.
They are becoming more and more in demand.
It's almost, let's be honest,
users, citizens, constituents,
people expect digital offerings.
It's no longer like, oh, that's cool that they have that.
So, it's no longer that, you know, like, positive force.
It's actually a negative force
not to have a digital product service experience.
So, it's become table stakes for organizations
to offer, you know,
to engage with their customer base
in the way that they want to be,
which happens to be in 2023, digitally.
-: Yep, definitely.
And I think one of the most challenging part about this is
that this is never a set it and forget it, right?
Because like we talked about,
change is happening all the time.
And that's kinda why we,
as part of being a mature organization,
we have to really employ this continuous modernization.
So, being able to recognize that changing needs,
how does it impact the interpretation, the views,
the four different perspectives of experience,
and then making the appropriate changes to do so.
So, we really,
so now let's kind of dig down a little bit deeper
and kind of discuss,
what's really driving this initiative, right?
So there are common factors driving the need
for a good digital experience.
One of them is, of course,
looking at good brand and reputation.
So here, customers are really swayed by the innovations,
advancements in digital technology.
So, they're seeing it in the environment.
And they're looking to our applications team
to really deliver and support them.
Leaders recognize the importance of these expectations,
like Vince has mentioned,
are now trying to integrate them
within the business strategy
as well as the brand
and the reputation of themselves.
So, we really wanna make sure
that a lot of the activities is really
about helping to improve,
not just in terms of the value that they're providing,
but in terms of how people are actually interpreting
and viewing the organization itself.
This becomes particularly important
when we're looking at government organizations,
where they're trying to make sure
that they have the trust and the respect
of the constituents that they are trying to govern.
There is also worker productivity.
So, of course,
as you evolve and adopt more complex processes,
tools and technologies,
your stakeholders will expect more from business units
and their teams.
And just unfortunate that teams employing manual processes,
legacy systems will really kinda struggle
to meet these expectations.
And the promise
of these digital products and services is really here
to kind of promote the simplification
of complex operations and applications,
as well as help businesses
and your teams better align to good operational practices
and making sure that they all align up
to the broader strategic goals and objectives
of our digital experience initiatives.
Another key driver is around organizational modernization.
So, like we mentioned before,
legacy processes, systems,
and traditional ways of working are no longer suitable
to meet today's needs,
today's digital objectives
and the needs that stakeholders expect.
And they really do drive up operational cost
without unfortunately increasing the benefits,
which unfortunately kind of drives the impediment
of business growth, innovation,
and as well
as consuming the very scarce resource and budgets.
So, this is why another reason we're shifting
to digital tools and technologies,
will hopefully bring these challenges to light
and really kind of demonstrate
how modernization is really integral part
of digital experience success.
So, what are we hoping to gain from this?
Well, one of them is about the flexibility and satisfaction.
So, employees and customers can choose
how they want to access, modify,
and consume digital products and services,
as well as being able to tailor it to their specific needs.
We want to help improve adoption
so the customer, end user, brand,
and employee really drive the selection, design,
delivery of products and services.
So, we also do wanna make sure
that even the most advanced technology will fail
if those key rules do not see the value
in the actual use of these technologies,
as well as the fact
that we want to really help improve the reliability.
So, being able to say that, hey,
digital products and services are delivered
with good technical value built into them, right?
Ensuring that they meet the industry regulatory
and company standards throughout the entire lifespan,
and in various different types of conditions.
But these things don't come without risk, right?
Because with digital experience and modernization,
there comes change,
and sometimes we are trapped up
in terms of the whole legacy and lore, right?
Sometimes it's very difficult to change
and pivot away from it.
We may be caught up in bureaucracy and politics.
So, competing and conflicting priorities
of strategic priorities
outside of the digital experience realm.
As well as that, and definitely in a very common situation,
we've seen a lack of quality standards.
So, the performance and support of digital products
and service are often hampered
because of stuff like unmanageable technical debt,
and because of deliberate decisions
to really kind of bypass,
so emit quality good practices,
which we eventually kind of start to see,
as the product and services
that we have currently in place becomes older
and becomes aging
in the environment that we're playing in right now.
So, as we kind of talk a little bit more about this,
digital experience really does require the collaboration
with everyone in the organization,
as the benefits and cost can really be felt
by both external clients and customers,
as well as internally facing business operations.
So, that's just the first priority.
And I wanna make sure that we have enough time.
So, I wanna hop right back into our second priority.
And that's intelligent automation.
So, artificial intelligence
and machine learning are rapidly growing.
We are constantly hearing it in the marketplace.
Organizations see the value
of machines intentionally executing high performance
and dynamic tasks,
such as driving cars, detecting fraud,
those types of things.
And we're starting to see more and more,
senior leadership see AI and ML
as opportunities to really extend
their existing business process automation investments.
But first off, what is intelligent automation?
So, intelligent automation is really the combination
of traditional automation technologies
such as business process management solutions,
RPA or robotic process automation,
with AI and machine learning.
The real goal here is to further streamline
and scale decision making
across various business processes
by removing human interactions for one,
addressing decisions that involve complex variables,
automatically adapting processes to changing conditions,
as well as bridging disparate automation technologies
into one integrated end-to-end value delivery pipeline.
What I mean by that is
that oftentimes we are developing
and implementing automation solutions and silos.
So, intelligent automation really does promote
an integrated end-to-end pipeline
with smooth handoffs
between these very different types of solutions.
But in the industry as well,
right now we are hearing about hyperautomation.
And we see that as a very popular state
for business process automation organizations.
And one of the things that we have seen
as a challenge is kind of differentiating these two.
So what's the difference?
Hyperautomation is really the act
of automating everything in an organization
that can be automated.
The intent here is to streamline processes
across the organization,
using intelligent automation as a mechanism,
which of course includes AI, RPA,
and of course other technologies
to run without human intervention.
The key difference here is that hyperautomation is
a business-driven disciplined approach
that organizers use to rapidly identify, vet,
and automate as many processes as possible.
And of course that's been quoted by IBM.
But here we wanna note
that hyperautomation enables intelligent automation.
But teams can solely adopt intelligent automation,
but do not need to adopt the automation first principles
that hyperautomation promotes.
So, why has intelligent automation become
an executive priority in many organizations?
Well, stakeholders recognize the importance
of business processes, automation, and AI,
and of course are looking for ways
to using these technologies.
Like, for example, as part of a Colfax study,
90% of executives stated automating business workflows
post COVID-19 will ensure business continuity.
And within that same report,
88% of the executives stated that they need
to fast track their end-to-end digital transformation,
using, of course, automation.
However, the many advertised benefits
that vendors often promote using these types of technologies
may not be easily achievable,
because we have seen
that manual and undocumented process may inhibit our ability
to just understand of what do we currently do have.
The systems that we want to automate are fragmented
and sometimes inaccessible.
We have poor data quality insights and security.
And we often have a lack of process governance
and management practices.
However, this is kind of why we definitely need
to be very strategic
in how we're actually implementing intelligent automation
by using a very methodical and strategic approach.
And this really kind of begins with understanding
of what is involved in intelligent automation.
So, intelligent automation involves many different types
of tools and technologies.
There's the artificial intelligence
and machine learning, right?
There are
the intelligent business process management systems,
and then this is really
about the combinations
of business process management tools with AI
and other intelligence capabilities.
There's robotic process automations,
and these are essentially robots
that are leveraging an applications user interface,
rather than scripting
and using some of the programing accesses.
And these are really automate based on rules,
repetitive tasks that are traditionally performed
by human workers.
We see that there's also process mining and discovering.
So, process mining really does involve
reading system event logs
and application transactions,
and applying some form of algorithmic analysis
to automatically identify
and map inferred business processes.
Process discovery on the other hand is intended
to be an unintrusive virtual agent,
so that it really kinda sits on top of user desktops
and record and monitors
how they interact with applications
to perform certain tasks and processes.
So, then they can map out
what does the process will end up looking like.
One of the more mature areas of intelligent automation is
what we would call intelligent process document processing.
And this is really about the conversion
of physical and unstructured data
into more of a structure
and in usable digital format
that can be used by automation solutions.
So, tools such like optical character recognition,
natural language processing,
are just common capabilities that kind of support this.
And then the very last part is around advanced analytics.
And this is really
about the gathering, synthesis, transformation,
and delivery of insights and consumable information
that really supports data driven decision making.
So, I guess the question is where do we start, right?
What are the tools and technologies that we need to select
to actually help get this up and running?
But first we, before we kind of make that decision,
we really have to first understand
of actually what are the motivators
driving intelligent automation adoption.
So, there are common factors.
For the very first one,
we identify the quality and throughput.
So, products and services within our organization,
delivered through an undefined manual process,
really risk the creation
of preventable catchable defects, flaws, holes,
and in other quality issues that often do come up.
IA solutions really reinforce
quality standards consistently,
and apply them across all products and services,
while tailoring the outputs to meet specific end user needs.
Another driver is worker productivity.
So, IA really does help remove a lot
of the tedious, routine, mundane tasks
that often distract or even restrict employees
from actually doing more valuable, more cognitively,
and focused and intensive work.
Practical insights can also be generated, right,
through these tools
that can really help employees make
better data-driven decisions,
as well as evaluate problems from different angles,
in addition to improving the usability and value
of the products and service
that they are helping to produce.
It also does help promote good process management practices.
Because we all know automation magnifies
existing inefficiencies
in our business process management practice,
such as unclear outdated process documentation,
as well as incorrect assumptions.
IA also does reinforce the importance
of good business process optimization practices,
such as the removal of waste, being more lean,
being more efficient in a very thoughtful way.
And we also need to make sure that,
as part of good process management,
we're also choosing
the most appropriate automation solutions
and configuring it in the right way
to maximize the solutions' value.
And one thing to note here is that automation solutions,
much like in the previous slide,
there are a ton of them out there.
So, we always,
do need to make sure
that we're choosing the right ones.
So, what are we hoping to gain actually from IA?
Well, just to reinforce this, documentation, right?
All business processes must be mapped and documented
so that it can be automated.
Hands off, IA can be configured and orchestrated
to automatically execute
when certain business process
or technology conditions are met
in an unattended, or if you like, an attended manner.
As well as the reusability, right?
Because IA is applicable in use cases really goes beyond
a traditional business processes.
We can see it be applied to automated testing,
quality control, audit, website scraping, right?
There are a ton of different types of use cases out there,
and we're seeing it can be applied
to many different areas of business units.
But what are the risks?
One of the prominent risks
that we have seen is data quality and bias.
So, the accuracy and relevance
of the decisions IA makes are really dependent
on the overall quality of the data used to train it.
And that's often been a little bit of a challenge
in many organizations we've been speaking to.
Ethics.
Some decisions can have significant reputation
or moral or ethical impacts if made incorrectly.
As well as the recovery and security.
So, IA is really composed of technologies
that can be compromised or fail.
So without proper monitoring, controls, recovery protocols,
really impacted IA will really generate significant business
and IT costs,
and can potentially harm customers, employees,
and the organizations
if those controls and monitoring are not put into place.
So, another question at Vince.
So, we have seen AI and machine learning brings
a broad range of opportunities,
as well as concerns,
that may be beyond
of what an organization can reasonably exploit or handle.
So, what are some advice that you can actually give
for those who are considering intelligent automation?
-: Yeah, and I think you hit a lot of the key points
around, you know, this is an opportunity,
but you need to make sure
that you're feeding it good data,
that you're, like, garbage in, garbage out.
I think if I had to give sort of a,
if I had to distill some advice down
to, like, a sentence or,
I would say, you know, be cautious but not afraid.
You know, proceed very deliberately.
Know why you're doing,
why you're introducing AI
and machine learning, RPA, whatever.
Know why you're doing it.
Know what problem you're trying to solve.
Because it is a really great opportunity
to automate a lot of those lower value tasks and activities.
And the real benefit to that is it frees up human people,
which is redundant,
but it frees up people
to complete higher value tasks
so you can actually create a virtuous cycle
for your customers and your users.
So, you know, I think AI, machine learning,
intelligent automation, it is inevitable.
So, how can you and your organization take advantage of that
to really benefit the organization as a whole?
-: Terrific. Great advice.
Thank you.
So, let's move on to the next priority,
and that's regarding to proactive application management.
So, application management is often viewed
as a support function
rather than enabler of business growth.
And focus and investments are only placed
on application management,
unfortunately, when it becomes a problem.
And the lack of governance
and practice accountability leave this practice
in a very much of a chaotic state,
where politics take over,
resource is not strategic allocated,
and customers are frustrated.
And as a result,
application management is often reactive
and brushed aside for new development.
So, we need to, we wanna be more proactive on that side.
But that's gonna get down to the basics.
What is application management?
So, application management ensures
valuable software is successfully delivered,
and is maintained for continuous
and sustainable business operations.
And it contains a repeatable set of exercises needed
to rationalize roadmap products and services
while balancing the priorities
of new features and maintenance tax.
Unfortunately, application management is commonly perceived
as a practice
that solely addresses issues, updates, and incidences.
However, we have seen the application management teams are
also tasked with new value delivery
that was not part of the original release.
But why is effective application maintenance
or the reactive practice not often good enough?
Well, application maintenance of course is the process
of modifying software system or its components
after delivery to correct faults, improve performance,
or other attributes, according to the IEE.
While it is critical
to quickly fix defects and issues when they occur,
reactively addressing them is often more expensive
than discovering them early
and employing the practices to prevent them.
So, if we're able to get ahead of the game,
can start to drive down some of the costs
that's often been consumed by application maintenance.
So, this is exactly
why proactive management is really critical,
and even if an application is working well,
its framework, its architecture,
and technology may not be compatible
with the possible upcoming changes stakeholders
and vendors may want to undertake.
So, applications may not be a problem now,
but they may soon be.
So we know that today's applications
may actually become tomorrow's shelfware.
They gradually lose their value, stability, robustness,
compatibility with other enterprise technologies,
and the longer these applications are left unattended,
or simply kept the lights on,
the more risk they will bring to the organization,
such as the discovery and exploitation
of security flaws and gaps,
increasing the lock into specific vendor technologies,
and the inconsistent application performance
across various different workloads.
And these impacts really do kind of compound
by the continuous work done on the system
that's often burdened with technical debt.
So, how can we actually be more productive?
Well, it really does require a disciplined practice
that will have to come in stages.
So, like you mentioned,
we know that proactive application management practices are
really critical to maintaining business continuity.
They require continuous review and modifications,
and like we mentioned earlier,
it will have to come in stages
in terms of how we can actually be transitioning
from more of a reactive state to more of a proactive state.
So, first off, we start off with the run to failure.
And this is around fixing
and enhancing the product when it breaks.
In most cases,
a plan is in place to ahead of the failure
so that the problem can be addressed
without significant disruption or costs.
As we start to become more proactive,
we become preventative,
so regularly inspect and optimize the product,
and to reduce the likelihood
that a certain failure may occur in the future,
we may schedule inspections based on specific timeframes
or usage thresholds.
Then we become more predictive.
So, we predict failures
before they actually happen,
using performance, usage data,
instrumentation, those types of things,
to really alert our teams
when products are potentially are at risk of failure,
according to specific conditions
that we have set ourselves, or thresholds.
And then the very last part is
about being reliability and risk-based.
And this is really analyzing all possible failure scenarios
for each component of the product,
and creating tailored delivery plans
to improve the stability, reliability,
and value of each product,
considering of what are some
of the trending security concerns that are happening,
as well as the trending performance concerns
as part of certain technologies.
Another question to you, Vince.
So, we do see that many organizations are prioritizing
this type of initiative,
despite recognizing its importance
in driving down long-term risk and cost.
So, why do you believe that is?
Like, why are people not prioritizing this?
-: Yeah, another, these have been on fire questions today.
So I would boil it down to two things, cost and capacity.
So, there's obviously an inherent cost
in having more of a proactive management approach
where you are trying to predict those failures
and you're taking steps.
But, you know,
some organizations may look at them as, well,
we're investing in a problem that doesn't exist yet.
And so there may be issues related to cost.
And the other is just capacity.
And when I talk about capacity,
it's the ability to do the work,
which really boils down to prioritization.
And so, you know,
organizations have a lot of things going on at any one time.
And so, you know,
because this isn't one of those burning platforms,
it gets less attention than, you know,
the fire that needs to be put out today.
And so, you know, and I fully agree with you,
you know, taking that proactive approach,
prevents the fire from ever starting,
but, you know, recognizing when is the point of no return,
and, you know, that can be challenging.
So, I would, yeah, it's cost and capacity for me.
-: Terrific.
And I think that's kind of one of the biggest challenges.
How do we invest in something where it's not broken, right?
Why fix it if it ain't broken?
But we all do know of the challenges
of compounding those decisions over time,
in terms of accruing that technical debt,
making our system more vulnerable,
because it's not up to date with latest patches
or latest security concerns.
And I mean, I don't think it's,
we venture far enough to say that,
"Hey, you know what, if you look at the news,
a lot of our things are going down
because there are flaws that has been there
for quite a bit of time that we're not filling up."
All right, so what are some of the driving factors,
are the driving factors
for proactive application management?
And I mean,
one of the running themes is, of course,
technical debt, right?
So, these are really about historical decisions
to meet business demands
by deferring key quality architectural
and all our software delivery activities
that lead to inefficient, incomplete code,
fragile legacy system, back doors,
broken processes, data quality problems, right,
a ton of other contributors
that really do kinda lead to this technical debt.
And the impacts of this challenge is huge, right?
Because, of course, further heightened,
if organizations are not actively refactoring, updating,
and monitoring those applications themselves.
And proactive application management is really intended
to raise awareness of an application's fragility,
and prioritize comprehensive activities
to help kind of bolster, strengthen,
harden these applications
alongside of new feature development.
Another thing is really
about the long-term application value.
So, applications are designed, developed,
and tested against a specific set of parameters,
which may become less relevant over time
as the business matures, technology changes,
and user behavior's gonna shift.
And continuous moderny of the applicate systems,
regular stakeholder and user feedback,
active technology and trend research, vendor engagement,
all of these things will reveal tax
and things that we need to do
so that we can help prepare an application
for future value opportunities,
and proactively addressing stability and reliance concerns
that may come up in the future.
And, of course,
another running theme that we've talked so far is
around guarding the security and resilience.
So, innovative approaches to infiltrating
and compromising applications are becoming
a very prevailing stakeholder concern.
And the loopholes,
the gaps in existing application security protocols,
control points and user trainings can easily be exploited,
right, to gain the trust of unsuspecting users and systems.
So, proactive application management
really does enforce continuous security reviews
to determine whether an applications are at risk.
And the goal here is to really prevent an incident
before they actually are happening
by hardening and complimenting measures
that are already in place.
So, what are we hoping to gain
from proactive application management.
Well, one of them is of course, consistent performance.
So, users expect the same level of performance
and experience from the applications in all scenarios.
So, this type of approach will help kind of ensure that.
They wanna make sure that they want to improve robustness.
So, by proactively managing our applications,
we're ensuring that they're resilient, right,
to the latest security concerns and upcoming trends.
But like we mentioned earlier,
we're also helping to help better manage operating costs.
So, continuous improvements
to the underlying architecture, code base, interfaces,
can really help minimize the cost
to maintain and operate the applications
because we're using good practices,
and that we are not building upon poorly designed
and technical debt heavy applications and systems.
But what are at risks?
So, like Vince has mentioned, this will take capacity.
And that may delay certain feature releases
that the business
or certain stakeholders have on the docket.
This will consume team capacity whether we like it or not.
And for us to be successful,
we need to have dedicated teams who are more than willing,
as well as management
and stakeholders are more than willing,
to invest in those team capacities
to do that proactive management.
The other areas that we have to make sure
that there is appropriate discipline,
because it's quite easy
to start developing new and more innovative stuff,
but it takes that discipline to go back and say, like,
"Hey, have we designed this correctly?
Have we developed this correctly?
Have we tested this correctly?
Have we implemented these controls correctly?"
And making sure
that we have that discipline
to just kind of get the mindset in
that this is kind of what we would have to do to ensure
that it has some long-term value going down the future.
So, while this practice can be interpreted
as technical in nature,
the capabilities to actually make this a reality requires
the realigning and resetting expectations
around our applications.
Stakeholder buy-in is absolutely critical in this case,
but raising it as a business problem,
we have seen is an unfortunate challenge.
So, definitely we can definitely talk more about this,
because there are a lot of business buy-in concerns
that may come up,
and if you're curious, please let us know.
We can help you kind of walk through that.
All right, so we only have about so much time left.
So we have two more priorities left.
So let's make sure we kind of get through this.
Multisource systems as our next priority.
So, various market and company factors are really motivating
the review on resource and system sourcing strategies.
And the right sourcing model provides key skills
and resources and capabilities to innovate
and meet our time to market financial
and quality goals of the business.
However, we have often found that organizations struggle
with how best to support sourcing partners
and to allocate the right number of resources
to maximize success.
So, first things first,
let's talk about what are multisource systems.
A multisource system is an ecosystem
of integrated internally,
as well as externally develop applications,
data and infrastructure.
These technologies can of course be custom developed,
heavily configured,
or they may be off-the-shelf solutions.
These systems can also be developed, supported,
and managed by internal staff
in partnership with outsource contractors,
or be completely outsourced.
Multisource systems should be configured
and orchestrated in a way
that really does maximize the delivery
of specific value drivers for the target audience.
Successfully selecting a sourcing approach is of,
and unfortunately in this case,
it's not as simple as an RFP exercise
to choose the lowest cost provider.
Defining and executing a sourcing approach
can be a significant investment and risk,
because of the close interactions third party services
and partners will have with internal staff,
enterprise applications, and business capabilities.
So, we have to be very careful
in terms of how we are actually selecting,
and selecting our sourcing partners.
So, this often does involve a detailed inspection
and examination of different candidates matching their fit
to the broader vision of the multisource system.
And in cases where control is critical,
technology stack and resource sourcing consolidation
to a few vendors and partners may actually be preferred.
In other cases,
where worker productivity
and system flexibility are highly prioritized,
a plug and play best of breed approach is preferred.
So, there's a lot of different things
that we need to consider,
as shown on the screen right now,
that we need to consider
to help to determine of how or what is the best approach
when it comes down to sourcing our systems.
So why is developing
a multisourcing system really important?
Well, we know that outsourcing is shifting
to a buy over build application strategy,
like what we're commonly seeing today,
is a common quick fix in dealing with a lot of the capacity
and skills gaps within the organization.
However, these quick fixes often become
very long-term implantations
that may not be accounted for
in the sourcing selection process.
So, current application
and resource sourcing strategies must be reviewed
to ensure that vendor arrangements meet the current
and upcoming demands and challenges of the business,
customers, and enterprise technologies.
So, unsurprisingly,
outsourcing has become a very popular way
to build and support and operate applications,
as we all know.
42% stated that they outsourced software development fully
or partially in the last 12 months,
and that was part of a 2021 Coding Sans report.
However, we see that organizations are dealing
with multiple vendors and partners
that are questioning
how to properly manage their outsource systems and resources
with internal policies and resources as well.
So, Vince, sourcing has been a long running concern
in the industry.
What makes today's environment particularly pressing
to have this initiative addressed?
-: Yeah, what I think is really interesting is
that organizations are looking at the multisourcing
as a way of managing risk.
It's a way of
avoiding the vendor lock-in
where you really don't have the flexibility
to be able to put the pieces together that are best fit.
And so going through, like,
a multi-vendor sourcing approach helps
to mitigate some of that risk of that vendor lock in.
-: Terrific.
So, this is why we need to ensure
that our sourcing decisions are really driven
by our department and system strategies.
So, first off,
we need to understand
how does the IT department want to be perceived?
Because whether we're using an external partner or not,
it's still viewed as IT.
So the image that your application department
and teams want to reflect is frequently dependent
on the application delivery and support,
as well as the resources they are composed of,
whether internally or externally.
Therefore, choosing the right sourcing approach
should be driven
by understanding who the teams are and want to be.
So, for example, an internal builder, an integrator,
or a plug and play player.
What they can't or want to do.
So, do they want to custom develop,
or do they want to implement it?
And what they can deliver or support,
for example, on the cloud or on premise.
All of that must be established.
Then we need to clarify what value is a system delivering?
So, well integrated systems, of course,
are the lifeblood of the organization.
And they provide the capability
to deliver value to customers, employees, and stakeholders.
However, the underlying system components may not be sourced
under a unified strategy,
which can lead to duplicate vendor services
and high operational costs.
The right sourcing approach ensures
that your partners address key capabilities
in your system's delivery and support,
and that they are positioned
to maximize the value
of critical and high-impact components.
So, let's kind of dive into a little bit deeper
as to what's really kind of driving this priority.
Well, first off is we are seeing
that more organizations are going down
as citizen development
or business-managed applications approach.
So, this is kind of where employees are implementing
and building their own applications,
and sometimes without the consultation or the advice of IT.
So, this kind of alludes to the whole shadow IT challenge.
However, instead of fighting against shadow IT,
in this case,
organizations are shifting the mindset
from the fighting shadow IT
to embracing business-managed applications.
So, using good practices that we commonly see
in multisource systems.
The other thing is that multisource systems gives us
the ability to address unique problems.
So, in this case,
point solutions offer features to address unique use cases
in uncommon technology environments,
use cases or business conditions.
However, point solutions are often deployed in silos
with limited integrations,
or overlap with other solutions themselves.
And the right sourcing strategy accommodates
the fragmented nature of point solutions
into a broader enterprise system strategy.
And then the last part is about vendor services.
So, some vendor services
in a multisource environment may be redundant,
conflicting, or incompatible.
And given that multisource systems are regularly changing,
it is sometimes difficult
to identify what services are affected,
what would need to be filled
if the solution is actually removed,
or which redundant services should be retired.
A multisource approach motivates
the continuous rationalization
of vendor services and partners
to determine the best mixture
of in-house and outsource resources,
capabilities and technologies.
So, what do we hope to gain?
Well, we wanna make sure
that our solutions are very business-focused solutions.
So, we wanna select the solutions
that best fit our employees and our workers' needs.
We wanna be flexible,
so being able to adopt any sort of applications
or solutions as we want,
and being able to remove them, edify them,
modify them at our own whim,
with either internally,
or with the help of external partners,
as well as we wanna optimize our cost.
So, rather than investing, for example,
in large upfront solutions,
perhaps it makes sense
to take a best of breed approach, right,
and adopt the applications
or the small sets of applications
that can better work together as a whole,
rather than going with a single vendor.
But what about the risks?
So, like you mentioned,
there are some challenges
when it comes down to just managing sprawl,
because with the ability to adopt any solutions as we want,
we may be in a situation
where we may have too much to deal with.
Adherence to policies.
So, of course, fragmented application implementation risk,
inconsistent adherence to security and other policies.
So we wanna be very consistent around there.
As well as integration and compatibility.
So, application integration can quickly become tangled
and untraceable.
So we really wanna make sure that we have that down.
So, interesting enough, like Vince has point out,
while this challenge is not new,
the shift in application performance strategy,
business empowerment and technology landscape,
places a greater importance
on creating a good approach to multisource systems.
All right, so let's get down to the very last priority.
So, that's the digital organization as a platform.
So, just very briefly,
a digital organization as a platform is a collections
of integrated digital services, products,
applications and infrastructure
that is used as a vehicle
to meet and exceed an organization of digital strategies.
It often served as an accessible place
for exchanges of information, goods, or services
to occur between producers and consumers,
as well as a community that interacts with said platform.
And this is according to Watts in 2020.
So, what does,
how do we describe a digital organization as a platform?
So, there are three key things.
For one, it is open and collaborative.
So, using open data, open APIs,
it's built collaboratively.
It is accessible and connected.
So, it is very ubiquitous.
It is well integrated, interoperable.
It can be accessed through many different types of means,
as well as, of course, digital and programmable.
So, we're able to,
it's supported by digital products and services.
It does have lots of accessibility.
It can't be tailored to meet certain needs.
So, why is digital organization, as a platform,
or DOaaP is a priority?
Well, we know that digital transformation continues
to be a high priority initiative for many organizations.
And they see digital organization as a platform,
as an effective way
to enable and exploit digital capabilities.
However, really kind of unleashing
these new strategies, opportunities,
and challenges are quite elusive
and unfamiliar to business leaders.
And they, and unfortunately,
current barriers are really inhibiting our ability
to actually see its real success.
One thing to note here is
that DOaaP is not just about technology,
it is really the,
not just the sole responsibility of business and IT,
a business and IT.
It needs to be a collective responsibility
of the organization.
So, interesting enough,
we've seen that in as part of a Nash Squared 2022 report,
that 47% of organizations plan
to unlock new value through digital,
and 50% of organizations are planning major transformation
over the next three years.
So, it's quite interesting of the fact
that businesses are now expecting more of the technology
and more of the teams to support this drive to digital.
So, as we start
to kind of build out our digital organization as a platform,
we really wanna make sure that we understand
of actually what makes an organization actually digital.
And there are five key principles that can align to it.
We have to make sure that it is customer centricity,
so it is aligned and driving towards customer expectations.
We have good management and leadership
and strategies that are in place
to make sure that the customer is always,
and the end user is always at the forefront
in terms of delivering it.
We have good infrastructure,
so providing good digital services
across all demographics and geographies.
It encompasses digitization and automation.
So, being able to go digital first,
making sure that all of the manual
and tedious types of processes are automated
as much as we can where it makes sense.
As well as the fact that we do have some enabling platforms
to better help support all of this.
So, Vince, I know we only have a couple minutes left here,
but we have seen digital experience
and digital organization
as a platform really benefit a lot from each other,
but are not often required to succeed.
So, the digital experience in DOaaP.
So, what's your advice
for organizations venturing into both priorities,
looking to gain the synergies of both,
but may not feel,
but not in a way that they're overcome or overwhelmed
with what is at hand?
-: Yeah, so I would say, again, like, go slowly.
Maybe don't put everything on your platform,
but like, just add to it incrementally,
deliver with some agility, lower a agility.
I would say that yes, they are sort of mutually exclusive,
but they are very complimentary.
You can have a digital organization as a platform
that has a very poor digital experience.
It still has the DOaaP.
I like that acronym by the way.
Does have the DOaaP,
but the digital experience for your users might be lacking.
So, you really do wanna make sure that they're complimentary
and that you are engaging users
in helping you to build, you know,
what are the things that should be on that platform,
how should it function, how should it look,
what are the requirements, what are their requirements?
So, yeah, very, very collaborative sort of design thinking,
approach to building that out.
-: Terrific.
So, what are the drivers that are driving behind this?
First and foremost is that given the fact
that we have a lot of technologies within our ecosystem,
there may be a different type of experience
or different type of branding
across all these different types of services
and products that are being offered.
So, DOaaP does provide a unified branding experience,
no matter which product or applications
or services that you're using.
There is an improved accessibility, right?
Because now,
since more of it is accessible to the broader public,
to the broader organizations
through a lot of the technologies
and interfaces that we're using,
it helps increase that accessibility.
But it also does help serve
as a justification for modernization,
because like you mentioned,
we're often burdened by legacy applications and systems,
which may be very difficult to justify.
So, we have seen organizations use this type of approach
to help justify that saying like,
"Hey, you know what?
If we wanna go down this direction,
we have to modernize our systems."
So, what are we hoping to gain from this?
Well, like you mentioned,
improve look and feel,
improve user adoption,
as well as the ability to support our shifting to digital.
But what are some of the risks?
So, like you mentioned,
as part of any automation
or any type of shift to digital,
data quality still remains as a huge issue.
System stability still remains as a huge issue,
because we can't be supporting all this
without the right technology.
But also the appetite,
the tolerance to actually modernize as well.
It becomes very difficult to shift to digital
if we're still stuck in our legacy systems,
or not able to play well with them.
So, like we talked about earlier,
DOaaP can be a fundamental change
in terms of how the business operates.
So, coming to agreement
of what it can and should be done needs to be ground
and agreed upon
across all roles and all stakeholders involved.
So, I mean, those are the five priorities
that we discussed today,
and we explored it a lot,
but like you mentioned,
we just scratched the surface.
So, if you'd like to learn more,
please reach out to our website
and download the full copy of our report to learn more.
And I do apologize.
I did run up against time.
And we will not be able
to answer any questions online here,
but please don't stop yourself
from putting some questions into the comments.
We will be releasing a FAQ,
and to have your questions answered.
So, please put your questions in there,
and we'll have them answered.
So, thank you very much for joining us today.
If you'd like to learn more,
or if you'd like to have a discussion
with myself or with Vince,
please reach out to your account rep.
If you're not an Info-Tech member,
you may reach out to Dave Bell
with the email address above on the screen,
and he'll be happy to answer your questions.
Thank you, and have a great day.