Advisors provide a continuous flow of information on the topics covered by each practice, including consultant insights and reports from the front lines, analyses of trends, and breaking new ideas. Advisors are delivered directly to your email inbox, and are also available in the resource library.
Challenging an Organization's Risk Management Social Context
Robert Charette
Unfortunately, for many decision makers in government and industry today, practicing robust risk management is still seen within their organizations’ social context as providing little if any positive upside, but instead possessing potentially large downside consequences for them personally and professionally. Many decision makers skeptically view rigorous risk analysis as akin to future blame analysis for something that might go wrong rather than a way to increase career or organization success. Changing this perception is difficult but not impossible.
4 Keys to Successful Customer Journeys
Kai Karolin Huppe, Nils Niemeier, Michael Kruse
Customer journey insight allows businesses to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, retain customers, and increase sales. In this Advisor, we make the case for stronger customer involvement, clearer governance, quantification of value, and a sharper focus, as we find these elements are the four main reasons implementations of customer journeys fail.
Digitally Disrupted! Decision Making and the Connected Architecture
Barry Devlin
In the drive to digitize more business processes, the intricacies of how all stakeholders interact with data have been underexposed. Though it is understandable that getting a grip on technology and reorganizing your business is hard enough, it is precisely this interaction that will determine your success. If you turn your perspective around, your data architecture will be of more value.
A Million-Dollar Question: Will Companies Use AI to Extend Their RPA Platforms?
Curt Hall
How interested are organizations in extending the capabilities of their RPA platforms and tools with more advanced, AI-based technologies? Fortunately, some initial findings from our ongoing survey on intelligent process automation (IPA) adoption in the enterprise helps shed some light on this question.
Bouncing Back from COVID-19, Part II: Telecom, Equipment Vendors, and Internet Services
Karim Taga, Rohit Sethi, Gregory Pankert
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to sizable disruptions in international economic activity, impacting all industries, although at different magnitudes. It is now time for decision makers to expand their focus beyond immediate crisis management to actions that will strengthen their competitive play in the medium and long term. Here in Part II of this Advisor series, we take a look at telecom, equipment vendors, and Internet services, in particular.
A Look at Mitigating Risk in 2020
Payson Hall
We buy fire insurance for our homes not because we expect a great return on the investment, but because the modest fee is a hedge against catastrophic loss. In light of the risk lessons learned thus far in 2020, increased investment in risk management going forward seems prudent.
Value Stream Mapping: 8 Steps to Get You Started
Catherine Louis, Karen Smiley
Value stream mapping (VSM) is a Lean manufacturing method used to analyze and manage the flow of materials/information/product to be able to bring a product to a customer. This Advisor proposes an eight-step VSM exercise to help team members all get on the same page.
The Digital Architecture Quest
Gar Mac Críosta
The promise of the big and complicated framework, method, or architecture is our safety. Conformance to norms leads to acceptability in our modern techno-geocentricity: we are the center, we hold the center, nothing else matters, we know all that needs to be known. But are we at an inflection point? On the one hand, we have a world dominated by increasingly complicated frameworks detailing each and every aspect of a “transformation,” be it agile, digital, or other, along with associated architectures. On the other hand, we can contrast this framework approach with alternatives emerging from complex adaptive systems and complexity science. Unfortunately, those alternatives come with the cognitive load associated with uncertainty and ambiguity, and it is this friction that maintains the status quo.
Life and Data in a Time of Pandemic, Part II
Barry Devlin
You might think that a pandemic such as COVID-19 would offer an ideal opportunity to prove the value of data-driven decision making; you would be mistaken.
Tackling the Risk Management Essentials
Noah Barsky
Proactive business risk management, distinct from the immediacy of finite crisis management, holds the potential for the most substantive and lasting changes to future company operations. Before COVID-19, when asked about top risks, executives would most often respond reflexively about regulatory oversight and economic conditions. If pressed further, many leaders quietly acknowledged concerns about the readiness of enterprise-wide risk programs to credibly identify, assess, and manage risk, particularly strategic risk.
Creating Competitive Digital Operating Models in Analog-Native Companies
Jonas Andrén, Lokesh Dadhich, Johan Treutiger
There are very few success stories of traditional analog-native companies becoming digitally mature enough to compete with the digital-native players. This drives an urgent need for the analog-native companies to adapt strategies, business models, organizational structures, and capabilities to remain competitive in the short term and relevant in the long term. Moreover, to build lasting differentiation and competitive advantage, this adaptation needs to be carried out while simultaneously preserving, enhancing, and expanding the core business.
Unlocking the Value of Acquisitions with EA: A Q&A
Gustav Toppenberg, Stefan Henningsson
In a recent webinar, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Gustav Toppenberg and Stefan Henningsson discussed the problem of growth by acquisition and how advances in enterprise architecture practices not only overcome obstacles but also enable value creation. In this Advisor, we share some questions asked at the end of the webinar that may help you to use EA to unlock the value potential of your own acquisitions.
How Is the Pandemic Impacting Enterprise Automation Efforts?
Curt Hall
Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, automation was deemed an important element of business survival and digital transformation strategies. Now we are constantly informed by vendors, the media, and IT advisory firms that business process automation is more necessary today than ever.
The Real Negotiation: Getting Over Your Collywobbles
Moshe Cohen
As IS executives, you negotiate constantly — whether it be externally with vendors, contractors, or other partners, or internally with different managers, departments, your project teams, or your direct reports. Some of these negotiations are formal, but most are informal, involving day-to-day interactions at work. These negotiations are consequential, determining your budgets, deliverables, schedules, availability of equipment or services, and other factors that influence your success. Unfortunately, many IS professionals never get exposed to negotiation skills and strategies as part of their education and training.
Bouncing Back from COVID-19, Part I: Consumer Electronics and Media
Karim Taga, Rohit Sethi, Gregory Pankert
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to sizable disruptions in international economic activity, impacting all industries, although at different magnitudes. It is now time for decision makers to expand their focus beyond immediate crisis management to actions that will strengthen their competitive play in the medium and long term. In this Advisor series, we take a look at the telecom, media, and technology sectors, in particular, which show relatively strong resilience to the adverse impact of COVID-19. Here in Part I, we begin with the COVID-19 impact to the consumer electronics and media world.
Proactive Risk Management with SRA Modeling
Michael Bissonette
I’ve always hoped to make risk-adjusted project schedule commitments while having teams buy in to working toward more aggressive target schedules. And I wanted to do so in support of the notion that great organizations must continuously strive to do more with less. This might sound contradictory, but it does not need to be — not if an organization also practices (and assimilates the results of) proactive risk management with the use of schedule risk analysis modeling and simulation tools and techniques.
The Heart of Architecture
Balaji Prasad
An architecture is designed collaboratively. Architects are also, sometimes, part of the collaborative process. Yes, “also, sometimes, part of.” The collaborative nature of architecture in enterprises is what makes it so challenging, intriguing, and even vexing to those who are entangled in what is a very multidimensional process.
Q&A: What's Up and Coming with Blockchain?
Karolina Marzantowicz
Advances in blockchain technology have been unwavering. Thanks to a slew of current and emerging trends, blockchain is now viewed as a mature and accessible technology and business solution for those seeking to make transactions with greater security, transparency, speed, efficiency, and cost savings. In a Cutter Consortium webinar earlier this year, Karolina Marzantowicz revealed some new blockchain-based innovations — such as the growth of global blockchain consortiums, stablecoins, digital currencies, new service offerings from big tech giants, and decentralized finance platforms — that are revolutionizing the banking and finance industry by transforming both the business and consumer experience in positive ways. In this Advisor, we share six questions asked at the end of the webinar that may help you in your blockchain journey.
Reskilling and Retraining During and After COVID-19
Cui Zou, Wangchuchu Zhao, Keng Siau
While the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the economy and work routines, it also provides opportunities for organizations to implement continuous learning and make progress toward upskilling and reskilling employees. We recommend managers and companies consider the four types of learning technology for workforce training, professional development, and onboarding described in this Advisor.
Operational Planning & Risk Mitigation: Managing Risk with AI & ML
Tom Teixeira, Craig Wylie
In the third installment of their webinar series, “Using AI/Machine Learning to Manage Risk,” Cutter Senior Consultants Carl Bate, Craig Wylie, and Tom Teixeira answered some questions about new risk models that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to understand and respond to the changing business landscape.
Fast Feedback Processes, Measurable Outcomes, and Empowerment: Lessons from COVID-19
Borys Stokalski
In Poland, the lockdown started at the beginning of March 2020. Instantly, the business, education, healthcare as well as social and cultural life switched to a new “modus operandi,” based on online relationships, sharing of digital assets, and digitally enabled processes. Digital habits, which used to be an optional way of handling daily routine tasks, have suddenly become the only possible way of achieving personal, professional, or political goals.
Overcoming the “Four Horsemen” of Ineffective HR Practices
Robert Ogilvie, Jeffrey McNally
This Advisor explores long-term and short-term solutions to the issues posed by the "four horsemen" of not-so-strategic HR practices.
Breaking Down Business Architecture: 5 Things to Know
Whynde Kuehn
As business architecture gains more and more attention and adoption worldwide, every once in a while it can be useful to lift up, step back, and refresh on a few key concepts. If you’re new to the discipline, these will help you to accelerate your understanding and navigate the wealth of information available. If you’re experienced with the discipline, these will help you to ensure alignment with the latest and greatest evolution. This Advisor lays out the top five foundational things you need to know about business architecture.
Can IPA Facilitate AI Adoption in the Enterprise?
Curt Hall
The RPA vendors have taken considerable interest in IPA. Over the past year, many have been adding (to varying degrees) AI technologies — particularly ML, NLP, smartbots, and advanced imaging — to their platforms to provide intelligent capabilities necessary to automate more complex processes and tasks that are beyond the scope of what is possible using only conventional RPA tools. This, in effect, has allowed the RPA providers to try and position their products as a familiar platform for organizations to segue AI into their operations.
Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Closing the Gaps to Success
Guljeet Nagpaul
Even as digital tools recast the entire healthcare industry model, old problems remain, especially in the centralized and technologically inefficient modes of data management. That’s where good data software testing and quality assurance come into play in the form of test automation. As automation becomes the software development standard for revenue-minded companies, regular testing is required to make sure productivity and security activities are above board.