Gartner: Executives Should Adopt IT for Sustainable Growth in Unsettling Times

GARTNER IT SYMPOSIUM/XPO — Over the last two years, CIOs and IT executives have faced swings in the economy, along with the complexities of the COVID era.

In uncertain and tumultuous times, leaders should embrace what’s called IT for sustainable growth.

That’s according to analysts who espoused its benefits during the opening keynote of the Gartner Symposium/Xpo Monday in Orlando, Florida.

CIOs and IT executives can foster this growth — one that considers digital investments that deliver repeatable financial and performance results in an efficient and responsible way.

Three strategies embody sustainable growth: revolutionary work, responsible investment and resilient cybersecurity.

How to Revolutionize Work

Tina Nunno is distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

Gartner’s Tina Nunno

“We have a unique opportunity with the pandemic,” Nunno said. “So many workers at home also significantly increased their digital skill sets and their appetite for technology. Seventy-nine percent of all workers see digital technologies as essential to their jobs, and 75% see improving their digital skill sets as important to business success.”

That technological savviness means workers are unlikely to put up with insufficient workplace technologies, pushing some to leave their positions. When workers were satisfied with enterprise IT applications, they were twice as inclined to stay — and were higher performing.

“However, only 31%, or one in three, report that they have all the technology they need to work effectively,” Nunno said.

Artificial Intelligence

Besides bolstering technological resources, it is important to take the “friction” out of work, Nunno said. Friction is when work is unnecessarily hard. The more friction points an organization has, the worse employees perform, and retention remains low. By investing in digital skills and removing friction, organizations can create a workforce that is better engaged.

To have such employee participation, businesses shouldn’t be afraid to invest in AI augmentation, Nunno said. She gave the example of doctors relying on AI to improve their practice.

“The job of the physician is not to blindly follow the prediction of the AI system, but to use the data to help assess why the patient’s risk is so high and determine which types of care would best prevent the patient from becoming worse. … AI is not going to replace physicians, but physicians who use AI are going to replace physicians who don’t. The high impact workforce of the future is AI-enabled,” Nunno said.

If aggressively adopting AI sounds futuristic, try embracing the “intraverse,” a virtual office that incorporates emerging metaverse technologies. It brings employees together in immersive meetings to collaborate and innovate. Gartner predicts that immersive meeting technologies will not plateau for five to 10 years. Organizations that experiment with technologies early will attract talent who want to stay ahead of the pack.

Making Responsible Investments

The analysts reinforced the idea that sustainability includes environmental, social and governance initiatives, and IT plays an integral role.

Kristin Moyer (pictured on stage above) is distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

“Responsible investment matters to people,” she told the crowd. “Employees get the opportunity to make a difference. Customers get solutions that align with their values, and investors get a more attractive return on your previous investments in digital.”

Being responsible means implementing what Moyer identified as the intelligent connected infrastructure (ICI). ICI combines …

… mesh fabric, AI, IoT, cloud, analytics and edge computing to share data. The ICI can increase growth for cities and businesses, and improve the lives of their citizens.

She also cited autonomous sourcing, which uses AI, machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP), to give organizations access to a greater range of suppliers.

Lastly, Moyer said that CIOs should digitally reduce energy use by implementing an energy and optimization system (EMOS). This makes proactive, data-led decisions in near real-time, reducing energy usage from 4% to 15%. She suggested using a microgrid combined with AI and ML to reduce energy costs. This will allow organizations to make money by selling energy back into the grid.

Resilient Cybersecurity

Despite advances in work and investments, businesses remain at risk without a resilient cybersecurity practice.

Paul Proctor is distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.

Gartner’s Paul Proctor

“A 2022 Gartner survey of board directors found that 88% of boards now view security as a business risk, not a technical one. This means that organizations need to start treating resilient, sustainable cybersecurity as a business risk that needs new types of investment,” Proctor said. “Protecting your brand makes you an employer of choice and a supplier of choice to your customers. Protecting your execution supports sustainable growth.”

Gartner identified three factors that can deliver competitive advantage for organizations in the long term. They include using external attack surface management (EASM), a process governance and management technology. Proctor said to implement software composition analysis to gain visibility into software supply chain vulnerabilities. Use threat intelligence to prioritize and fix vulnerabilities.

Organizations should also prioritize their most important business outcomes by identifying their technology dependencies that have direct insight into their most important business or mission outcomes. By using this business outcome approach, organizations can prioritize systems that support sustainable growth, such as manufacturing, sales and citizen engagement.

Finally, protection level agreements (PLA) enable organizations to make business decisions over how much security they want and how much they want to spend. Organizations should invest in achieving protection-level outcomes, not the implementation of tools, Proctor said.

“Change the way you invest in security tools and start investing in security outcomes,” he said. “In the boardroom, we use this business value and kill chain to communicate how resilient cybersecurity protects you and your customers.”