Buyer’s Lens fourth-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook

Table of Contents

  1. Summary
  2. New technology management structures
    1. IT departments have become the biggest hindrance to corporate growth
    2. The rise of the shadow CIO
  3. Meeting new expectations for sales and service
    1. C-level leadership is required to integrate customer service across departments and channels
    2. Reaching grocery shoppers through digital commerce
    3. Retailers: What are you opting for?
  4. Applying new technology within various companies
    1. A small bank uses technology to its advantage within its targeted niche
    2. A hospital network updates its systems for continuing innovation
    3. Online gambling: an industry that has learned the value of predictive analytics
  5. Near-term outlook
  6. Key takeaways
  7. About Laura Stuart

1. Summary

The fourth quarter of 2013 found companies grappling to manage the transformation being brought on by cloud, mobile, analytics, and social technologies. Firms must now adapt to all this new technology so thoroughly penetrating the enterprise.

This report highlights three trends common within IT buyer organizations or in the forefront of non-IT technology decision-makers in functional or line-of-business management. As reflected in the Gigaom Research Buyer’s Lens blog posts during the past 90 days, the following trends have emerged:

  • An imperative to adjust management structures to handle the new technology and its importance. From an inability for business units to get the technology they need as quickly as possible to a lack of accountability for technology risk at the corporate board level, companies are struggling to update their organizations to manage rapid, technology-driven change.
  • New customer expectations for sales and service that organizations aren’t yet meeting but know they need to. Enterprise executives acknowledge that they don’t yet have strategies in place to leverage integrated multichannel sales, although they are increasing investments in that area. To date, only those firms with a strong commitment to technology at the top of their organizations have been effective in integrating channels across departments.
  • The varied ways companies are applying new technology for immediate impact. From small to large and new to established, firms are gaining advantage and differentiating themselves with new applications even though the next generation of infrastructure and organization is still being formed. The strategy of each successful implementation is generally transferable across industries.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Federico Caputo/Thinkstock

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