What We Learned

The ValueBlue team was thrilled to attend the recent Gartner IT Symposium | Xpo held in Orlando, Florida October 17-20, 2022. Amongst presenting, talking with customers, partners, prospects, and peers at our booth as well as attending conference sessions we gained valuable insights into emerging trends and current market activity.

The theme of the conference was “Meet the Moment. Make the Difference.” With well over 5100 organizations attending and 185 vendors exhibiting, the sessions were designed to address the most significant challenges faced by CIOs and IT executives today to inspire and enable them to “drive future technology innovations, successful business strategies, and enable critical execution.”

At the conference, the top 5 sessions that CIOs and IT executives attended were:

1. The Top Predictions for Cybersecurity 2022-2023
2. Igniting The Next Generation of Digital Government
3. Cybersecurity Strategy Planning Best Practices
4. Building a Digital Future: The Metaverse
5. Top Trends in Data and Analytics for 2022

Looking Forward

A recurring theme proposed by Gartner this year in several presentations was the concept of the “fusion team” This is the idea that CIOs see the need and should promote the use of Business Technologists throughout the organization in different lines of business and not solely in the IT Department. According to Gartner research, 67% of CEOs want more technology work done directly within business functions.  They strongly suggest that today’s modern CIO should devise ways to help business technologists spread throughout their organizations.

As more and more executives are digitizing their functions, they are looking for ways to gain a competitive edge, elevate their performance, and expand their capabilities. With a changing market and looming economic uncertainty to navigate, now more than ever there is a need and demand for strategic vision, collaboration & leadership.

Leaders need to determine the key business goals of their organizations and set the North Star for where they want to be. Just as importantly, these same leaders also need to address some key questions:

- What gets in the way?
- What creates risk?
- How can we get to where you want to be faster?
- What are those outcomes that really matter?
- What is the value system of the organization you are working in? Is it Speed, Cost? Risk?
- What will be measured in terms of success?
- What does great look like?

The Power of Collaboration

Many sessions spoke to the advantage of working collaboratively and the power and competitive edge that can be harnessed from that approach.

For example, our session, Collaboration Between Strategy, Architecture, and Execution MUST be Data-Driven, spoke about the importance of data-driven collaboration across your organization. Essentially, in order to achieve the business value, you want with transformation initiatives you need to focus on: creating a data-driven strategy, creating a business model canvas emphasizing your value chain, and removing the black box around planning and design.

Within the same vein, something I speak to prospects and clients about daily is their decision-making culture. We want to know about and help with:

1. How do you make your business decisions?
2. How much integrity do those decisions have?
3. What keeps you from making great decisions?
4. How can you help your executive to be more confident in your choices and decisions?

How We Help

ValueBlue clients leverage our SaaS platform to create visuals to communicate goals that drive meaningful change. The platform’s collaborative approach enables you to tap into different units and departments to gain perspectives on the main transformation goals and allows for better business decisions, identifying top value delivery opportunities, engaging with their stakeholders proactively, and becoming outcome-driven leaders. By reflecting on investment decisions in your roadmaps, everyone’s actions are focused on desired outcomes. The critical business decisions made throughout your organization will impact additional revenues, reduce/optimize costs, and mitigate risks.

All in all, it was a great week filled with lots of information and takeaways. I enjoyed my time at the Gartner IT Symposium | Xpo and I look forward to attending next year. If you would like to chat about my learning at the event or want to learn more about how ValueBlue helps organizations achieve their transformation goals, please reach out!