Technology Vision Drives Business-Tech Collaboration

An organisation’s approach to the future of work, strategic technology investments, risk and resiliency, and operating model agility can help it capture technology-driven opportunities and achieve work outcomes.

Internal strategic imperatives and broader industry and market trends and disrupters can help business leaders develop a transformation agenda that identifies potential business opportunities and a joint business-technology strategy to pursue them, according to a recent report from Deloitte’s CIO Programme. This approach can also help leaders reconsider the relationship between technology and business functions and change the way these once-separate entities work together to cocreate value. The resulting combined business-technology strategy lays the groundwork for a technology vision that can help businesses realise the potential opportunities.

An organisation’s technology vision comprises four components: the future of work, strategic technology investments, risk and resiliency, and technology operating model agility. Its approach to each of these aspects can help cultivate an environment in which innovation flourishes, encourage collaboration between business and technology functions, and create sustainable competitive advantage.

Future of work in technology. Market dynamics and technological advances are reshaping the work of technology, who does the work, and where the work is done. Thanks to the emergence of robotics, cognitive, and other technologies, work that was previously the domain of the IT function and primarily performed by humans often is being augmented and distributed to service providers and machines, opening up a tremendous opportunity for the technology function to shift from managing technology to delivering more creative and strategic business outcomes.

To deliver the new technology work, the workforce likely will require fresh expertise and capabilities, including uniquely human soft skills like curiosity, creativity, and empathy. To access talent with these abilities, businesses have at their disposal an array of options, from fulltime and contract workers to managed services and crowdsourcing.

Finally, cocreation between business and technology

functions may require flexible workplaces conducive to teamwork and innovation and increased use of digital collaboration and communication tools.

Strategic technology investments. As business and technology functions become more integrated, technology investments are evolving, according to Deloitte’s most recent global CIO survey. For example, spending on emerging technologies likely will increase, as nearly half (44%) of business and technology leaders say such tools will significantly affect their businesses in the next three years.

Expected changes in capital budget allocations presage the fundamental change in technology’s strategic value. The percentage of technology budget spent on business operations is predicted to decrease from 56% today to 47% within three years, while the 18% spent on innovation today is expected to rise to more than a quarter (26%) during the same period, according to the survey.

Finally, legacy and core modernisation initiatives can be essential components of a solid technology foundation, but other less-monumental projects can enhance the strength of technology environments. Examples include shifting applications to the cloud, reducing technical debt, automating existing systems and tools, and enhancing the flexibility of technology architecture.

Many technology leaders surveyed rely on inconsistent, ad hoc measurements or do not measure the effect of technology investments. Increases in technology funding likely will require alignment of stakeholder expectations and the development of solid evaluation models, target hurdle rates, metrics on return and value, and clear accountability.

Risk and resiliency. As technology becomes more integrated into the fabric of the business, the attack surface likely will become larger, and the business impact of cyber risk far greater than in the past.

Cybersecurity likely will remain critical, but the focus of risk may also expand to include business resiliency and the risks and disruptions inherent in a combined businesstechnology strategy—risks whose reach extends beyond traditional IT environments into factories and other workspaces, products, and even customer locations. Because digitally connected customers will have access to data through many channels that all need to be secure and resilient, this effort also could include integrating security into product design and development.

C-suite leaders can determine the risk appetite of the organisation and its individual business areas to inform decisions about resource allocation and help ensure effective risk-related technology investments.

Technology operating model agility. When IT’s sole mandate was operational excellence, and it had little dependence on other business functions, it was served well by traditional operating models, such as the plan-buildrun approach. The increasing expectation for business and technology functions to collaborate to cocreate value may require a shift from traditional, centralised IT to a distributed Thin IT model in which technologists are embedded in business areas.

Changing the operating structure can be an important first step; even more critical is the shift from a project orientation to a product mindset. Many organisations have begun this journey by adopting Agile and DevOps processes and methodologies but are not yet fully cocreating value in partnership with the business function. What’s missing? Joint accountability and seamless blending of the technology and business operating models and processes. ***

To help their organisations reimagine the role of technology, technology leaders can identify opportunities where technology can create differentiated and sustainable business value, and actively engage business functions with ideas and prototypes that help stimulate innovation. Business executives can begin by acknowledging that responsibility for technology extends beyond the IT function and then placing technology at the centre of strategy development and execution. The reward likely will be a smoothly operating organisation with seamlessly blended business and technology functions that rally around customer and employee needs and can respond rapidly to changing market conditions.