By Betsy Burton
Business Leaders, How Do You Make Technology Decisions?
When I started out in this business, there was a clear line of control and management between business and IT. The CIO and IT department had the single authority to determine what technologies were used, supported, and managed. The reality is that CIOs and IT professionals knew technology better than business leaders, and business leaders largely just left those decisions to the CIO.
For years, I have been telling business and technology leaders that this dynamic was going to change, and they needed to prepare for this change. Many CIOs tried to fight it, and retain control over technology, and some CIOs still try to retain control over IT.
Democratization of Technology
But the reality is, as technology has become more available to businesses and consumers, as IT budgets have been cut in favor of business units, and as technology knowledge has become common across business and IT users, the center of financial, requirements and decision-making on technology has shifted from IT to increasingly business leaders.
Fast forward 30 years…..today we find many business units have technology professionals on staff, including business unit CIOs, power users, business unit CDOs, application developers and enterprise architects.
This new democratized technology landscape fundamentally changes how technology products and services are defined, determined, deployed, and maintained – including cloud-based services.
What Are the Issues Important to Business Leaders?
As a business leader, you are likely much less concerned about operating traditional IT data centers, enterprise-wide applications, and cross organizational management.
- You are concerned with enabling your work force to be effective, including your sales force, marketing, customer engagement and product development teams.
- You are focused on business transformation, automation, and operations in a new digital-first world.
- You are prioritizing ensuring that your technology solutions and services can operate across your business ecosystem, securely, reducing risks of cyber-attacks, and ransomware.
- And last, chances are you are concerned about what new technologies are on the horizon that you need to pay attention to (such as generative AI, AI-enabled applications, prescriptive analytics, etc.), and which technologies are being over hyped.
You need technology and business advice, and you need strategic and operational advice about people, processes, best practices, information, technologies, governance, security, etc etc. business leaders
Technology-Enabled Business Strategies and Decisions
Traditional CIO or big IT focused advisory and consulting services are not singularly focused on what you need; they are used to working with CIOs and centralized IT organizations and charging millions to help CIOs pick technologies.
Aragon Research realizes that, as a business leader, you need specific help with your business decisions and strategies. Business leaders need help with technology-enabled business strategies as well as short-term tactical decisions. Not just business and not just technology, but integrated technology-enabled business strategies and decisions.
Bottom Line
Business leaders, it is critical for you to recognize that you have as much of a role, if not more, in determining your organization’s use of technology products and services as your CIO counterparts.
In addition, you need advice specifically focused on the issues critical to you, and help you make the right technology-enabled business strategies and decisions. And most of you will need tools, best practices, and data to help you work effectively across business areas, with your enterprise CIO and with senior leadership.
As a business leader, you need your own targeted advice, independent from traditional CIO advice. I would encourage you to review our research coverage to see how Aragon Research’s visual research, research agenda and toolkits, got-to-market strategy planning and personalized engagement model might be right for your technology strategy and decision-making needs.
Learn more about AI LIVE in our upcoming webinar:
Prompt Engineering for the Enterprise: Accelerating Workflows with Generative AI
Prompt Engineering for the Enterprise: Accelerating Workflows with Generative AI
Join us for a webinar where Aragon’s analyst, Adam Pease, will explore the process of prompt engineering for large language models within an enterprise context. This session will not only introduce you to the fundamental principles of prompt engineering but also showcase how forward-thinking businesses are already leveraging generative AI to revolutionize their operational efficiency.
On Thursday, July 13th, Adam’s talk will cover:
- How businesses can deploy generative AI in a cost-effective way
- The critical importance of prompt engineering for successfully leveraging generative AI
- Actionable best practices for prompt engineering in different workplace use cases