Context

This document outlines our upcoming TOP research projects for the next quarter.

If you are interested in contributing to any of these research pieces in development, please reach out to your trusted Info-Tech advisor or our SVP of Research Development, Jack Hakimian (jhakimian@infotech.com).

Quarterly Research Agenda

1. Overview of Our Quarterly Research Agenda
2. Selection of Sample Research Projects
3. Role-Based Research
4. Industry Research
5. About Info-Tech

Better research than anyone

We provide better research than anyone to our members across two major pillars:

Role-based research

Industry-leading, practical research oriented along the key roles in technology departments such as CIO, CISO, or the (S)VP of Infrastructure.

Industry research

Deep, industry-specific methodologies and guidelines to complement our role-based research and provide context for your industry.

Develop a Value-First Business Automation Strategy

Automation projects drive value

This research is intended to:

• Offer guidance in building a value-first automation strategy that can be leveraged to automate at scale.
• Provide a clear Info-Tech position on what automating at scale looks like.
• Provide Info-Tech members with actionable and practical steps all while pointing them to other pieces of our research to help them continue their automation journey.

60% of automation projects fail

• Business automation has been around in different forms for at least a decade. Generative AI and other enhancements in technology are providing new opportunities to take a fresh look at what, how, and why we automate.
• The general perspective is to automate as much as possible as fast as possible. This leads to major challenges:
  • It gives no guidance on priority or importance when it comes to what to automate.
  • In many organizations, it's just not practical to accelerate an automation program.
  • It does not consider a total cost of ownership perspective on automation. Benefits are often overstated while costs and risks are underestimated.

TCO prioritization improves project success rates

• Value is front and center, not your process. While many tools focus on automating processes, the Info-Tech perspective is to make choices based on value delivered and use cases supported.
• Be realistic with your value-first automation strategy. Advisory firms tend to promote aggressive scaling of automation for almost all organizations. While we acknowledge that many organizations are unprepared, unwilling, or unable to accept it, our key argument is that the costs of automating many processes often outweigh the benefits. The reason is that people do not consider the full costs along the entire lifecycle, including ramp-up time to adjust the tools, the need to keep exception routes, changing technology, and integration efforts to other platforms.