business & IT alignment

The Falsehood Of Digital As The North Star Ever since “digital” swept across the world and became a word that’s almost synonymous with innovation, companies large and small have been in a race to digitize . . . everything! Driven in part by the (correct) assumption that customers themselves are increasingly digital, and bolstered by […]

I believe the integrated product team is the most important economic unit of the 21st century. Can the old I&O dog learn these new product team tricks?

Customers demand that marketing coordinate with sales, service, and commerce to deliver better experiences. That’s why enterprise marketing technology (martech) is melding with customer experience (CX) to deliver consistency and relevance (see Forrester’s “Predictions 2019: B2C Marketing” report). Martech is a direct line to consumer touchpoints, and marketers should embrace and leverage it to drive […]

Nearly all CIO organizations struggle to optimize cloud consumption. It’s helpful that there is a growing set of tools to help you learn how to best leverage cloud platform services and how to identify when your use is suboptimal and overly costly. But this guidance would be far more effective if it could give you […]

CIO: It’s Time To Step Up Your Technology Innovation Game In 2018, the CIO role team at Forrester has stepped up its emphasis on technology and technology innovation. Now we believe it’s time for you to up your game. At the beginning of the year, we made some big shifts in our research alignment. I moved […]

CIO: It’s Time To Step Up Your Technology Innovation Game In 2018, the CIO role team at Forrester has stepped up its emphasis on technology and technology innovation. Now we believe it’s time for you to up your game. At the beginning of the year, we made some big shifts in our research alignment. I moved […]

At its AWS Summit in San Francisco this week, Amazon Web Services announced a series of new services and GA’d a few from Re:Invent but the theme coming out at the conference was clearly on broadening its ability to accelerate your organization’s digital innovation strategy. While the core of this theme has been a key focus of AWS since its […]

Transformation is hard. If you have the wrong culture, the wrong mindset, it is almost impossible. Cultural alignment is a huge enabler of change — when done well, it greases the skids; when poorly executed, it can stop transformation dead in its tracks. Digitally innovative firms are characterized by embracing technology as a driver of […]

As enterprises strive to stay on a path of digital evolution, the consulting and systems integration marketplace is rapidly transforming as well to deliver a new generation of digital services. Forrester data shows that services buyers are focused on the right priorities: improving customer experience and digitally reinventing the business for growth. But the path to […]

Forrester’s has published its mid-year global tech market outlook for 2017 and 2018 (see “Midyear Global Tech Market Outlook For 2017 To 2018”). In constant currencies, we project that global purchases of technology software, hardware, and services by businesses and governments will grow by 3.4% in 2017, and by 4% in 2018. Software and tech […]

Fresh off a successful event in Washington, DC last week, we’re gearing up for Forrester’s Privacy & Security Forum Europe in London on 5-6 October. Forrester is gathering experts in cybersecurity, privacy, customer experience, regulatory compliance, identity management, personalization, blockchain, and a range of related topics.  Together, Forrester analysts and leaders from firms like ABN […]

Vantiv has the largest payments industry acquisition of 2017 ($10.4B) under its belt — now what? Integration is the trickiest part of any acquisition and comes after the dust settles and the deal is done. This crucial phase begins in earnest this week for Vantiv and Worldpay. To accelerate its business and achieve the full […]

I was fortunate to participate in a historic morning gathering last week at the White House! Industry-leading private sector CIOs discussed and shared their technology business management (TBM) best practices, approaches, and ideas with CIOs and technology leaders of federal agencies. The White House leader for strategic initiatives kicked off the morning by setting expectations […]

DevOps is one of the most powerful weapons that CIOs have in their arsenal. DevOps unites the entire enterprise in delivering business transformation with superior customer experience. Companies like Target, Capital One, Walmart, ING, Nordstrom, Netflix and JetBlue are already reaping the benefits. In order to unlock the promise of DevOps, CIOs must lead the call for […]

Since when did data management and data governance become interchangeable? This is a question that has both confounded and frustrated me.  The pursuit of data management vendors to connect with business stakeholders, because of the increasing role business units have had in decison making and holding the purse strings to technology purchases, means data governance […]

At some level, I see dysfunction in almost every client I work with. This isn't something new. There probably isn't an organization on the planet without some level of dysfunction. Perhaps a degree of dysfunction is acceptable or even desirable. But eventually organizational dysfunction reaches a point where it begins to impede the ability of […]

My clients ask for help quantifying the financial impacts of implementing a CRM technology solution. CRM initiatives must not only be technically sound but must answer the question “What will we get for our money?” In my new report, Quantify The Business Value of CRM, I provide an overview of Forrester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) […]

There are multiple maturity models and associated assessments for data governance on the market. Some are from software vendors, or from consulting companies, which use these as the basis for selling services. Others are from professional groups like the one from the Data Governance Council. They are all good — but frankly not adequate for […]

For many traditional IT organizations, BT Strategic Planning is a new approach to developing technology strategy. As such, it often raises more questions than answers. If you’d like to know how to get more answers then this blog post is for you (if not you can skip the rest). To help you get stuck in […]