With employees willing and able to bring privately procured technology to work, often technically superior to that provided to them by their employer, why would IT say no?  What happens to the IT systems landscape when IT say yes, and what benefits can be expected from a strategy that incorporates the ability for staff to choose the tools that make them most productive?

In this session, Warren Burns and Doug Neal will outline the results of their research into BYOT, and special guest Emma Whitty, Global Strategy for End User Services at Kraft Foods, will share her experience in driving a paradigm shift in end user support models.  Key learnings to take away from this event are:

• A conceptual architecture for enabling ‘bring your own’ initiatives.
• People and process changes required for the adoption of BYOT.
• How to build a business case to support a BYOT programme.

The briefing will be held in Melbourne, at a venue to be confirmed, commencing at 0900 and concluding at 12 noon with a light lunch.

Whether the issue is web-based services, business intelligence, mobile apps or social media, marketing has become an increasingly hi-tech, digital profession.  Consequently, it now has many of the same uncertainties, disruptions, and supplier dynamics long faced by Enterprise IT. 

In this session, Frank will present the strategies and practices that companies are adopting as they seek to better leverage their digital investments and prepare for the many marketing/IT challenges ahead.

Who should attend?

This web conference will appeal to CIOs, Marketing Directors and other business/IT leaders.

For literally decades, the mission and culture of Enterprise IT has been primarily back office in nature, with IT responsible for core infrastructure and internal company systems.  But today, modern technologies such as smart products, mobility, social media, the web, and the apps revolution have made IT very much a front-of-the-firm issue.  This shift is creating tremendous opportunities and challenges for the traditional Enterprise IT function which must learn to respond effectively to external market signals and move at marketplace speeds.

At this important half-day event,  we will explore three main issues:

• The ongoing wave of game-changing new front-of-the-firm trends and technologies.
• IT's increasingly essential relationship with marketing and sales.
• Emerging IT organizational models and practices to enable the required business/IT agility.

In addition, we will further explore the agility issue through a case study with Siemens, with a particular focus on the role of their ERP initiatives.

The meeting will commence at 1500 and conclude at 1930 including dinner.

Our half-day agenda will include the following:

• Presentation of the overall results of the project so far (Douglas Neal and Jim Ginsburgh).
• Discussion of findings by participants.
• Presentations by participants of their approaches to Post-PC, BYOT in response to the issues raised in the project.
• Overall conclusions (all).

There will be ample time for free discussion.  A detailed agenda and list of speakers and attendees will be circulated in due course.

Listed below are some of our key project results to date:

• It is more about responsibilities and productivity improvement than it is about devices.
• Organizations need to explicitly adopt a change management approach that starts with building awareness and ends with organizational and budget changes that make it stick.
• Responsibility and authority for making the changes must be recognized and aligned, either formally or informally.
• Security must be approached from a risk management perspective, not just from a compliance perspective.
• A business-side sponsor is needed who is both visible and enthusiastic – a good place to look is marketing.
• The use of consumer bandwidth and public wifi is an important step and facilitates the move to a more agile outside-in model for both the network and the business.
• As enterprises move to an outside-in model, IT shifts from delivery to enablement and double-deep employees shift to DIY.
• Traditional vendors initially oppose these changes and will have to morph in new ways to keep the business.
• IT financial transparency is essential to long-term success.

The workshop will be held on the morning of 28 June 2012 at Vintners’ Hall, London, EC4.

Our half-day agenda will include the following:

• Presentation of overall results of the project (Kirt Mead and Rod Clarke).
• Discussion of research results by participants.
• Presentations by participants of their approaches to agility and plug and play (two or three cases).
• Overall conclusions (all).

There will be ample time for open discussion.  A detailed agenda and list of speakers and attendees will be circulated in due course.

This project has focused on approaches to enhancing organizational agility while still maintaining management control.   Among our main findings:

• Agility has become increasingly important as firms recover from the Great Recession and begin to concentrate again on top line growth, innovation, and getting close to customers.   Agility depends heavily on achieving shared use of key processes and systems platforms across business units.  
• Efforts to move large organizations to shared ERP platforms, often driven by reporting and compliance concerns, are often seen as reducing agility.  Many interviewed firms were having more success with sharing technical and operational processes which are located closer to the front of the company.  But such initiatives typically require that IT have influence or control over all of IT, and not just the back office.
• Most firms are seeking to move from the tight integration of the leading ERP packages towards a more loosely-coupled structure of shared components, services and platforms that would also be more open to third party suppliers for particular services:  ‘plug and play’.
• The most advanced firms are moving their organizations and offerings towards shared components, implementing service oriented architecture (SOA) in both IT and the business.  An advanced plug and play model with many components available over the web is gradually emerging.  ‘Next generation’ firms (for example, Google, Amazon) appear to be the most advanced in pursuing this approach.
• The future of the major ERP platforms is a matter of pressing client concern in all of the above areas.

The workshop will be held on the morning of 19 July at The Gherkin, London.

Our half-day agenda will include the following:

• Presentation of the overall results of the project so far (Douglas Neal and Jim Ginsburgh).
• Discussion of findings by participants.
• Presentations by participants of their approaches to Post-PC, BYOT in response to the issues raised in the project.
• Overall conclusions (all).

There will be ample time for free discussion.  A detailed agenda and list of speakers and attendees will be circulated in due course.

Listed below are some of our key project results to date:

• It is more about responsibilities and productivity improvement than it is about devices.
• Organizations need to explicitly adopt a change management approach that starts with building awareness and ends with organizational and budget changes that make it stick.
• Responsibility and authority for making the changes must be recognized and aligned, either formally or informally.
• Security must be approached from a risk management perspective, not just from a compliance perspective.
• A business-side sponsor is needed who is both visible and enthusiastic – a good place to look is marketing.
• The use of consumer bandwidth and public wifi is an important step and facilitates the move to a more agile outside-in model for both the network and the business.
• As enterprises move to an outside-in model, IT shifts from delivery to enablement and double-deep employees shift to DIY.
• Traditional vendors initially oppose these changes and will have to morph in new ways to keep the business.
• IT financial transparency is essential to long-term success.

The workshop will be held on the morning of 25 July 2012 at DuPont's Offices in Wilmington, DE 91805.

The need for growth is the business story of 2012, and probably beyond.  What can society do to create jobs, improve living standards and pay our ever-escalating bills?  Can we pursue growth and austerity at the same time, or must we explicitly choose?

The IT industry finds itself in the middle of all of these questions.  Information technology is clearly creating many new forms of employment and richly rewarding many new skills, but it is also eliminating countless jobs in areas as diverse as sales, customer support, retail, middle management and office support. Additionally, as companies seek to balance their own needs for both austerity and innovation, IT is usually the most powerful tool available, as so many modern technologies are both much cheaper and much more capable than their predecessors.

In this important one-day conference, pioneering CIOs, prominent business/technology strategists and Leading Edge Forum researchers will discuss how IT is affecting the growth and vitality of their firms, their industries and their employees, as the technology-driven economy of the 21st century begins to takes shape.

Download information on this year's tour here.

In the past we have written about employees who were increasingly double-deep – expert in both the business and key parts of IT.  However, as we look forward, we think the nature of double-deep is changing.  Future double-deep employees are unlikely to become ‘deeper’ through something like learning to program in C#.  They will become deeper by learning to make effective use of platforms such as Salesforce – and these platforms are likely to work with agents, not just drag and drop.  We see possibilities with the launch of capabilities such as Android’s Voice Actions, Apple’s Siri and Cluzee.

These platforms and agents are evolving quickly and taking advantage of new mobile and post-PC technologies.

At the same time, double-deep employees outside IT have access to many options (as the picture of the multi-armed gentleman suggests).  The job of IT includes making it easy for him to make use of the most appropriate platforms and agents for the job.  To do that, we need to update ourselves on the latest and impending innovations in platforms, agent technology, big data, mobility and post-PC devices.  And we need to learn how to train staff in their best use – to make sure our double-deep employees don’t resort to the hammer to try to solve their problems.

Increasingly, IT organizations are looking to reposition themselves for the future and at the front of the organization, not just delivering back office systems.  Understanding the future of Do-It-Yourself Systems will be vital to that change.

As you will see from our findings from last year’s Study Tour, our tours are a unique opportunity to learn what market leaders are doing and suppliers are planning. 

Places on the tour are limited, and I encourage you to book early.  If you wish to reserve a place or have additional questions, please contact Jane Kingston by email or by telephone on +44 (0)20 7015 6829.