GOLD COAST, Australia, September 13, 2023

Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2023 APAC: Day 3 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, taking place this week on the Gold Coast, Australia. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. You can read the highlights from Day 2 here.

On Day 3 of the conference, we are covering sessions on talent management, mergers and acquisitions, machines as customers and technologies that will transform your digital future.

Key Announcements

Talent Management - Solving for Adaptability, Not Retention

Presented by Neil Osmond, Distinguished VP, Advisory, Gartner

The focus on hiring and retaining highly skilled technology specialists has been insufficient to address IT’s perennial talent challenges. In this session, Neil Osmond, Distinguished VP, Advisory at Gartner, showcased adaptive management strategies that can be used to minimize disruption in the delivery of business outcomes in spite of inevitable attrition, while accommodating the technology workforce's increasing interest in flexibility and mobility.

Key Takeaways

“We are currently in a triple talent squeeze: IT talent is harder to find, more expensive and harder to retain.”
“Build processes that allow IT talent to adapt to new roles in anticipation of demand. Hire in anticipation of need, recruit for growth behaviors, build overlapping skills capacity and embed learning into ways of working.”
“Empower all employees to learn new skills and try new things, while encouraging team managers to trust them.”
“Work with HR and finance to prepare for anticipated attrition by pre-hiring in batches for efficiency.”
“Cultivate learning and expand talent pools by prioritizing passion and potential in employees and new hires.”
“Offer a job rotation program that incorporates development of new skills into the work of delivering key business objectives.”
“Require consultants to embed your employees into their teams to augment their work, so skills that had not previously existed in your organization are acquired.”

The CIO's Role in Mergers and Acquisitions

Presented by Andy Rowsell-Jones, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

Successful M&A is best played as a “team sport.” However, the M&A process is not always well understood and it’s not always clear where and how CIOs need to be involved to deliver success. In this session, Andy Rowsell-Jones, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, outlined the key role CIOs must play as part of the M&A team for business outcomes to be achieved.

Key Takeaways

“IT has an important role to play at all stages of the M&A process, from strategy to integration and operations.”
“During the strategy phase when deals are initially being valued, help build a business case from an IT costing/investment perspective to support a potential acquisition.”
“Understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risk of the business being evaluated for acquisition through a detailed due diligence exercise.”
“IT is a critical lynchpin to all cross-functional areas of acquisition integration, and IT integration must be an enabler of revenue, cost, productivity and culture synergies.”
“As the organization’s acquisition aspirations increase, learnings from each deal must be applied to increase and improve the areas identified for absorption style integration, which is a critical enabler for serial M&A at scale.”
“Three common failure points include post-deal software license expenses not being optimized; transition service agreements running for too long and are too expensive; and the assessment of techquisitions lack technical expertise.”
“Transition service agreements are common and can be a source of governance problems as integration responsibility and operational responsivity diverge.”
“Address licensing costs by involving sourcing, procurement and vendor management in negotiations much sooner in the M&A process.”

CIOs Must Choose a Path Now for Machines as Customers

Presented by Don Scheibenreif, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

Billions of machine customers are headed your way. But what tangible steps can be taken to get this moving in your organization? In this session, Don Scheibenreif, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, shared insights and actions to help CIOs meet this trillion dollar opportunity.

Key Takeaways

“Machine customers are already among us and will represent trillions of dollars in opportunity. Start to really think about what this means for your business, or watch as others leap ahead.”
“It’s tempting to see this whole idea as some far off future thing that only huge companies will be able to create and control their own machine customers. But that isn’t the case.”
“Machines won’t need the same user interface as humans – it will be very different. By 2028, machine customers will render 20% of digital storefronts obsolete.”
“Making machines that buy from others will be the hardest path, because you’ll have to connect to a business ecosystem where a machine could choose from multiple suppliers. Many are reluctant to share information on a platform with their competitors, which is what is needed.”
“If you’re in the public sector, you might be asking what relevance are machine customers to me? The answer might surprise you. Think about all the physical devices you use and all the organizations you do business with.”
“No doubt you’ve heard it said many times that being a “fast follower” is the way to succeed. Go after the growth curve the moment you detect it — don’t wait for the perfect use case, or others will move ahead.”
“Be the leader that brings everyone together on this opportunity. Lead the organization’s technology architecture to support machine customers by working collaboratively with sales, product, service, marketing and IT.”

Five Technologies That Will Transform Your Digital Future

Presented by Nick Jones, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

In the future, digital humans will redefine assistants, robots and services; tiny ambient IoT will sense and track anything at low cost without batteries; satellites will revolutionize communications to people and things; autonomic drones and robots will learn while they automate tasks; and secure computation will enable new digital ecosystems. In this session, Nick Jones, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, explored these five technologies and how they will transform your digital future.

Key Takeaways

“Everyone's definition of “disruptive” is different, so you need a process to track from your specific perspective. Establish a trend and technology watching team to identify and categorize disruptive technologies.”
“Assess the potential social and regulatory issues of technologies such as digital humans and tiny ambient IoT before adoption.”
“Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications is an important communications technology because of its low latency, but be cautious about adopting early as it’s an emerging technology in a complex market.”
“Secure computation is becoming increasingly important as more things become connected and ecosystems access personal information. While established principles exist, implementation is challenging due to cost, skills, performance and availability.”
“The number of autonomic robots will grow by multiple orders of magnitude in the long term. This scaling will be impossible with conventional task-specific training that requires skilled experts."
“All five of these technologies are potentially transformational and should be investigated. Task your technology strategy team to evaluate their impact on your organization.”
“Seek new business opportunities enabled by individual technologies and combinations of these emerging technologies.”
“Consider partnerships, such as academic organizations, to provide advice on more complex and futuristic techniques.”

That's a wrap for Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo on the Gold Coast. See you next year.

View coverage from Day 2

About Gartner

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