2024 Technology Key Issues Research

What priorities do technology leaders have for the coming year? How prepared are they to address advances, such as Gen AI? Highlights of findings from The Hackett Group’s 2024 Technology Key Issues research, with Principal Michael Fuller and Principal Kyle Robichaud.

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s “Business Excelleration^® Podcast,” where week after week we hear from AI consulting strategy experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. This episode is hosted by Gary Baker, Global Communications director for The Hackett Group. Today’s episode will discuss findings from The Hackett Group’s 2024 Technology Key Issues research. He is joined by The Hackett Group’s Principals Michael Fuller and Kyle Robichaud from the Technology Transformation practice.

To begin, Michael shares that The Hackett Group has been producing their Key Issues Study across multiple functions for many years. This year’s study was particularly interesting considering the economic and political background of the times. ChatGPT and Open AI disrupted a lot of technologists’ plans for last year. This year’s report focuses on the trends and priorities shaping technology groups and their partner organizations.

Then, Kyle highlights his largest surprises from this year’s findings. For the third consecutive year, securing data and systems was the No. 1 priority for information technology (IT) organizations, which didn’t come as a surprise. What did come as a surprise, however, was that for four out of the 10 priorities of IT, the business did not have confidence that it would be delivered. This includes improving stakeholder experience, realizing value from tech and investments, aligning tech skills and talent to business needs, and maturing data value to the enterprise. IT leaders and chief information officers don’t believe they have the talent to execute on maturing and industrializing the enterprise’s data. Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) will help companies stay relevant in the market and make decisions at the best time. Without having a good grasp on their data, companies will run into a multitude of problems, including sharing of potentially sensitive data.

Having been in technology for 27 years, Mike is no longer surprised that technologists are asked to do more and more each year. What did surprise him about the study was the expectation that in just one year, that volume is expected to increase by over 5%. This means a large pile of demand waiting for technology teams who are consistently asked to do more with less. This year, the number of fulltime employees for technology organizations are only expected to rise by .2%. This goes back to AI and automation, which organizations have been using for some time to fill these gaps. The biggest question moving forward will be whether clients will be able to implement these technologies into their day-to-day operations.

Before wrapping up, Kyle highlights a company that is effectively realizing the value of data automation. The Hackett Group worked with a client going through a journey in the source management space. They saw the opportunity in using Gen AI to help reduce tickets and estimated a 50% reduction overall. This is all about having the right service catalyst in place to reduce resolution time. Gen AI also has helped with chatbot redirection, simultaneously increasing customer satisfaction. In closing, our guests offer closing thoughts on today’s conversation and look toward a more efficient future for technology organizations.

Time stamps:

0:49 – Welcome to this episode hosted by Gary Baker.

1:33 – Mike overviews the 2024 Key Issues Study.

3:02 – The biggest surprises from this year’s findings.

5:15 – The importance of maturing and industrializing data.

7:35 ­– The extent to which technology organizations are being asked to do more with less.

9:50 ­– The challenges of Gen AI implementation.

11:20 – An example of a company realizing the value of Gen AI.

14:00 – Closing thoughts.