Timothy Britt, CEO/Founder, Synoptek, Irvine, CA.
The new year marks the commencement of insightful dialogues surrounding emerging trends, innovative technologies, progressive business strategies and engaging interviews with esteemed industry leaders. To enable sustained growth, every organization will need to define its trajectory for business and technology progression. They will need to make crucial choices on technology adoption, how to ensure a seamless blend between bots and humans, enhance customer interactions and ensure strategic deployment of generative AI.
There is no better way to start a new calendar year than to sit down and pen down thoughts on growth plans and strategies. Here’s what I think the technology industry will be up against in the coming year.
Customer experience will be a key focus area for technology professionals in 2024.
Every situation is different. Every organization is different. One of the most essential things for technology professionals and consultants is to build a great customer experience. Often, technology professionals may be in the back of the corner, distancing themselves from the customer. That is not an ideal scenario.
You really need to understand the customer. Go out and talk to your customers. Get in the trenches with your customer. Understand how they’re interacting with your organization. Also, speak to business stakeholders interacting with your customers to get a better and deeper understanding of precisely what they want.
Successful alignment of technology investments with critical business strategies is the key.
The value of technology and successful technology investments depends on organizations. When we walk into organizations, we witness 40 to 50 different technology projects running simultaneously. When reviewing their extensive list of prioritized projects, it becomes evident that numerous initiatives lack the desired impact, often resulting in inefficiencies and suboptimal outcomes.
When I meet with customers and talk about the technology they’re using to realize business results, I witness that there is more focus on ad-hoc implementation than strategic vision. Businesses should focus more on strategies. They should try to realize the business vision and achieve the intended results. Technology is just a tool that helps us do that.
The most crucial thing the technology department in a company—or the CIO or CTO—can do is ensure that all tech initiatives are attached to a key business strategy. Everyone should be aligned on what the most critical business strategies are. Technology initiatives should be aligned explicitly with prioritized business.
At my company, we are putting this into practice so that our customers can focus their resources on the more important things to achieve growth.
Lessons learned from the past year must influence decision-making in the coming year.
Last year, Synoptek replaced many of its systems and upgraded platforms to new ones, affecting everyone in the company. During this process, there are a few things we realized we need to keep in mind as we help our customers going forward.
First, the business and the people who own its processes must be fully engaged while partnering on the technology projects to be successful.
Second, there needs to be a structured methodology. We must paint a true picture of what the future will be in a clear way and, more specifically, why we are doing it.
Third, we often forget how people are affected by changing systems. They are trying to do their jobs effectively. Suddenly, we take all the systems and change how they work, introducing new processes, and things don’t work as they initially thought. Setting their expectations, training them sufficiently and helping them through that transition is essential.
To ensure every stakeholder saw and agreed on the plan to make things happen, we found that the most effective way was to have “executive envision” workshops. These workshops helped our people talk openly and honestly about the business challenges and then design appropriate solutions. By spending a little bit of time in two or three sessions, we gathered information from everyone and outlined solutions that solved the big problems.
Organizations must brace for top tech and business challenges.
In today’s volatile world, companies will need to be agile and able to operate in the event of an unexpected outcome or need to build a pivot. They must set up a solid technology foundation in the cloud.
Next, whether companies are growing or pivoting, any change will bring vulnerability, which opens the door to many bad actors. So, they must chart out a risk and compliance framework to protect data and intellectual property and keep systems running.
We should all be grateful for the job we get to do.
For example, due to this role, I can talk to hundreds of our customers every year, and I get to witness first-hand in these interactions how technology is used to do legendary things.
The technology industry is constantly innovating, and seeing how our customers utilize these advancements to accomplish tasks that were once deemed impossible is truly exciting.
It’s also thrilling to be in this age of generative AI, intelligent automation and NLP models and witness their capabilities in fueling innovation and human interaction.
Closing Thoughts
In today’s technology landscape, the possibilities are truly remarkable. To drive strategic success, it’s imperative to enhance tech initiatives that can tangibly transform and elevate your business.
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