The Accessibility Business Case for IT

Accessibility goes beyond compliance

Analyst Perspective

Avoid tech debt related to accessibility barriers

Accessibility is important for individuals, businesses, and society. Diverse populations need diverse access, and it’s essential to provide access and opportunity to everyone, including people with diverse abilities. In fact, access to information and communications technologies (ICT) is a basic human right according to the United Nations.

The benefits of ICT accessibility go beyond compliance. Many innovations that we use in everyday life, such as voice activation, began as accessibility initiatives and ended up creating a better lived experience for everyone. Accessibility can improve user experience and satisfaction, and it can enhance your brand, drive innovation, and extend your market reach (WAI, 2022).

Although your organization might be required by law to ensure accessibility, understanding your users’ needs and incorporating them into your processes early will determine success beyond just compliance.

Heather Leier-Murray
Senior Research Analyst, People and Leadership
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

1. Harvard Business Review, 2021

Info-Tech Insight
The longer you put off accessibility, the more tech debt you accumulate and the more you risk losing access to new and existing markets. The longer you wait to adopt standards and best practices, the more interest you’ll accumulate on accessibility barriers and costs for remediation.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations who are looking to:

• Build a business case for accessibility.
• Ensure that digital assets, products, and services are accessible to everyone, internally and externally.
• Support staff and build skills to support the organization with accessibility and accommodation.
• Get assistance figuring out where to start on the road to accessibility compliance and beyond.

The cost of inaction related to accessibility is rising. Preparing for accessibility earlier helps prevent tech debt; the longer you wait to address your accessibility obligations, the more costly it gets.

More than 3,500 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in the US in 2020, up more than 50% from 2018.

Source: UsableNet. Inc.

Common obstacles

These barriers make accessibility difficult to address for many organizations:

• You don’t know where your gaps in understanding are. Recognizing the importance of accessibility and how it fits into the bigger picture is key to developing buy-in.
• Too often organizations focus on mitigating risk by being compliance driven. Shifting focus to the user experience, internally and externally, will realize better results.
• Conventional approaches to accessibility often fail because the expectation is for users to do the hard work. One in five people have a permanent disability, but it’s likely everyone will be faced with some sort of disability at some point in their lives.¹ Your organization has to be doing at least 80% of the hard work.²
• Other types of compliance reside clearly with one area of the organization. Accessibility, however, has many homes: IT, user experience (UX), customer experience (CX), and even HR.

1. Smashing Magazine

2. Harvard Business Review, 2021

90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2020

Only 4% of those that claim to prioritize diversity consider disability in those initiatives.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2020

The four principles of accessibility

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) identifies four principles of accessibility. WCAG is the most referenced standard in website accessibility lawsuits.

Source: eSSENTIAL Accessibility, 2022

Why organizations address accessibility

Top three reasons:

Source: Level Access

Still, most businesses aren’t meeting compliance standards. Even though legislation has been in place for over 30 years, a 2022 study by WebAIM of 1,000,000 homepages returned a 96.8% WCAG 2.0 failure rate.

Source: Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice

How organizations prioritize digital accessibility

43% rated it as a top priority.

36% rated it as important.

Fewer than 5% rated as either low priority or not even on the radar.

More than 65% agreed or strongly agreed it’s a higher priority than last year.

Source: Angel Business Communications

Organizations expect consumers to do more online

The pandemic led to many businesses going digital and more people doing things online.

Source: Statistics Canada

Disability is part of being human

Merriam-Webster defines disability as a “physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person’s ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions.”¹

The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that a crucial part of the definition of disability is that it’s not just a health problem, but the environment impacts the experience and extent of disability. Inaccessibility creates barriers for full participation in society.²

The likelihood of you experiencing a disability at some point in your life is very high, whether a physical or mental disability, seen or unseen, temporary or permanent, severe or mild.²

Many people acquire disabilities as they age yet may not identify as “a person with a disability.”³ Where life expectancies are over 70 years of age, 11.5% of life is spent living with a disability. ⁴

“Extreme personalization is becoming the primary difference in business success, and everyone wants to be a stakeholder in a company that provides processes, products, and services to employees and customers with equitable, person-centered experiences and allows for full participation where no one is left out.”
– Paudie Healy, CEO, Universal Access

1. Merriam-Webster
2. World Health Organization
3. Digital Leaders, as cited in WAI, 2018
4. Disabled World, as cited in WAI, 2018

Untapped talent resource

Common myths about people with disabilities:

• They can’t work.
• They need more time off or are absent more often.
• Only basic, unskilled work is appropriate for them.
• Their productivity is lower than that of coworkers.
• They cost more to recruit, train, and employ.
• They decrease others’ productivity.
• They’re not eligible for governmental financial incentives (e.g. apprentices).
• They don’t fit in.

These assumptions prevent organizations from hiring valuable people into the workforce and retaining them.

Source: Forbes

50% to 70% of people with disabilities are unemployed in industrialized countries. In the US alone, 61 million adults have a disability.

Source: United Nations, as cited in Forbes

Info-Tech’s methodology for the accessibility business case for IT

Insight Summary

1. WAI, 2018

Blueprint deliverables

This blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.

Accessibility Business Case Template

The business case for accessibility is strong. Use this template to communicate to senior leaders the benefits and challenges of accessibility and the risks of inaction.

Accessibility Maturity Assessment

Use this assessment to understand your current accessibility maturity.

Blueprint benefits

Measure the value of this blueprint

Improve stakeholder satisfaction and engagement

• Tracking measures to understand the value of this blueprint is a critical part of the process.
• Monitor employee engagement, overall stakeholder satisfaction with IT, and the overall end-customer satisfaction.
• Remember, accessibility is not a one-and-done project – just because measures are positive does not mean your work is done.

In phase 2 of this blueprint, we will help you establish current-state and target-state metrics for your organization.

Suggested Metrics
Overall end-customer satisfaction
Monies saved through cost optimization efforts
Employee engagement
Monies save through application rationalization and standardization

For more metrics ideas, see the Info-Tech IT Metrics Library.

Executive Brief Case Study

INDUSTRY
Technology

SOURCE
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 2018

Google

Investing in accessibility
With an innovative edge, Google invests in accessibility with the objective of making life easier for everyone. Google has created a broad array of accessibility innovations in its products and services so that people with disabilities get as much out of them as anyone else.

Part of Google’s core mission, accessibility means more to Google than implementing fixes. It is viewed positively by the organization and drives it to be more innovative to make information available to everyone. Google approaches accessibility problems not as barriers but as ways to innovate and discover breakthroughs that will become mainstream in the future.

Results
Among Google’s innovations are contrast minimums, auto-complete, voice-control, AI advances, and machine learning auto-captioning. All of these were created for accessibility purposes but have positively impacted the user experience in general for Google.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 4 to 6 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

Understand Your Current State

Phase 1
1.1 Understand standards and legislation
1.2 Build awareness
1.3 Understand maturity level

Phase 2
2.1 Define desired future state
2.2 Define goals and objectives
2.3 Document roles and responsibilities

Phase 3
3.1 Prepare business case template for presentation and approval
3.2 Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

The Accessibility Business Case for IT

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Identifying and understanding accessibility and compliance requirements and the ramifications of noncompliance.
• Defining accessibility, disability, and disability inclusion and building awareness of these with senior leaders.
• Completing the Accessibility Maturity Assessment to help you understand your current state.

Step 1.1

Understand standards and legislation

Activities

1.1.1 Make a list of the legislation you need to comply with

1.1.2 Seek legal and/or professional services’ input on compliance

1.1.3 Detail the risks of inaction for your organization

Understand Your Current State

Outcomes of this step
You will gain foundational understanding of the breadth of the regulation requirements for your organization. You will have reviewed and understand what is applicable to your organization.

The regulatory landscape is evolving

Canada

• Canadian Human Rights Act
• Policy on Communications and Federal Identity
• Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
• Accessible Canada Act of 2019 (ACA)

Europe

• UK Equality Act 2010
• EU Web and Mobile Accessibility Directive (2016)
• EN 301 549 European Standard – Accessibility requirements for public procurement of ICT products and services

United States

• Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)
• Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
• Air Carrier Access Act of 1986
• 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA)

New Zealand

• Human Rights Act 1993
• Online Practice Guidelines for Government

Australia

• Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA)

Regulatory systems are moving toward an international standard.

1.1.1 Make a list of the legislation you need to comply with

1. Download the Accessibility Business Case Template.
2. Conduct research and investigate what legislation and standards are applicable to your organization.

a)	Start by looking at your local legislation.
b)	Then consider any other regions you conduct business in.
c)	Also account for the various industries you are in.

3. While researching, build a list of legislation requirements. Document these in your Accessibility Business Case Template as part of the Project Context section.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

1.1.2 Seek professional advice on compliance

1. Have general counsel review your list of regulations and standards related to accessibility or seek legal and/or professional support to review your list.
2. Review or research further the implications of any suggestions from legal counsel.
3. Make any updates to the Legal Landscape slide in the Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Ramifications of noncompliance

Go beyond financial consequences

Beyond the costs resulting from a claim, noncompliance can damage your organization in several ways.

Source: May Hopewell

In the last four years, 83% of the retail 500 have been sued. Since 2018, 417 of the top 500 have received ADA-based digital lawsuits.

Source: UsableNet

1.1.3 Detail the risks of inaction for your organization

1. Using the information that you’ve gathered through your research and legal/professional advice, detail the risks of inaction for your organization.

a)	Consider legal risks, consumer risks, brand risks, and employee risks. (Remember, risks aren’t just monetary.)

2. Document the risks in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Step 1.2

Build awareness of accessibility and disability inclusion

Activities

1.2.1 Identify gaps in understanding

1.2.2 Brainstorm how to reframe accessibility positively

Understand Your Current State

Outcomes of this step
You’ll have a better understanding of accessibility so that you can effectively implement and promote it.

Where to look for understanding

First-hand experience of how people with disabilities interact with your organization is often eye-opening. It will help you understand the benefits and value of accessibility.

Where to look for understanding

• Talk with people you know with disabilities that are willing to share.*
• Find role-specific training that’s appropriate.
• Research. Articles and videos are easy to find.
• Set up assistive technology trials.
• Seek out first-hand experience from people with disabilities and how they work and use digital assets.

Source: WAI, 2016

* Remember, people with disabilities aren't obligated to discuss or explain their disabilities and may not be comfortable sharing. If you're asking for their time, be respectful, only ask if appropriate, and accept a "no" answer if the person doesn't wish to assist.

1.2.1 Identify gaps in understanding

Find out what accessibility is and why it is important. Learn the basics.

1. Using the information that you’ve gathered through your research and legal counsel, conduct further research to understand the importance of accessibility.
2. Answer these questions:

a)	What is accessibility? Why is it important?
b)	From the legislation and standards identified in step 1.1, what gaps exist?
c)	What is the definition of disability?
d)	How does your organization currently address accessibility?
e)	What are your risks?
f)	Do you have any current employees who have disabilities?

3. Review the previous slide for suggestions on where to find more information to answer the above questions.
4. Document any changes to the risks in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Reframe accessibility as a benefit, not a burden

A clear understanding of accessibility and the related standards and regulations can turn accessibility from something big and scary to an achievable part of the business.

The benefits of accessibility are:

Source 1: WAI, 2018

1.2.2 Brainstorm ways to reframe accessibility positively

1. Using the information that you’ve gathered through your research, brainstorm additional positives of accessibility for your organization.
2. Clearly identify the problem you want to solve (e.g., reframing accessibility positively in your organization).
3. Collect any tools you want to use to during brainstorming (e.g., whiteboard, markers, sticky notes)
4. Write down all the ideas that come to mind.
5. Review all the points and group them into themes.
6. Update the Accessibility Business Case Template with your findings.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Make it part of the conversation

A first step to disability and accessibility awareness is to talk about it. When it is talked about as freely as other things are in the workplace, this can create a more welcoming workplace.

Accessibility goes beyond physical access and includes technological access and support as well as our attitudes.

Accessibility is making sure everyone (disabled or abled) can access the workplace equally.

Adjustments in the workplace are necessary to create an accessible and welcoming environment. Understanding the three dimensions of accessibility in the workplace is a good place to start.

Source: May Hopewell

Three dimensions of accessibility in the workplace

Case Study

INDUSTRY
Professional Services

SOURCE
Accenture

Accenture takes an inclusive approach to increase accessibility.

Step 1.3

Understand your current accessibility maturity level

Activities

1.3.1 Complete the Accessibility Maturity Assessment

Understand Your Current State

Outcomes of this step
Completed Accessibility Maturity Assessment to inform planning for and building your business case in Phases 2 and 3.

Know where you are to know where to go

Consider accessibility improvements from three interconnected aspects to determine current maturity level

Accessibility Maturity

People

• Consider employee, customer, and user experience.

Process

• Review processes to ensure accessibility is considered early.

Technology

• Whether it’s new or existing, technology is an important tool to increase accessibility.

Accessibility maturity levels

Determine your level of maturity

Use Info-Tech’s Accessibility Maturity Assessment

• On the accessibility questionnaire, tab 2, choose how much the statements apply to your organization. Answer the questions based on your knowledge of your current state organizationally.
• Once you’ve answered all the questions, see the results on the tab 3, Accessibility Results. You can see your overall maturity level and the maturity level for each of six dimensions that are necessary to increase the success of an accessibility program.
• Click through to tab 4, Recommendations, to see specific recommendations based on your results and proven research to progress through the maturity levels. Keep in mind that not all organizations will or should aspire to the “Optimize” maturity level.

1.3.1 Complete the Accessibility Maturity Assessment

1. Download the Accessibility Maturity Assessment and save it with the date so that as you work on your accessibility program, you can reassess later and track your progress.
2. Once you have saved the assessment, select the appropriate answer for each statement on tab 2, Accessibility Questions, based on your knowledge of the organization’s approach.
3. After reviewing all the accessibility statements, see your maturity level results on tab 3, Accessibility Results. Then see tab 4, Recommendations, for suggestions based on your answers.
4. Document your accessibility maturity results in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Phase 2

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Phase 1
1.1 Understand standards and legislation
1.2 Build awareness
1.3 Understand maturity level

Phase 2
2.1 Define desired future state
2.2 Define goals and objectives
2.3 Document roles and responsibilities

Phase 3
3.1 Prepare business case template for presentation and approval
3.2 Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

The Accessibility Business Case for IT

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Defining your desired future state.
• Determining your accessibility program goals and objectives.
• Clarifying and documenting roles and responsibilities related to accessibility in IT.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Project lead/sponsor
• IT leadership team
• Senior leaders/decision makers

Step 2.1

Define the desired future state of accessibility

Activities

2.1.1 Identify key stakeholders

2.1.2 Hold a key stakeholder focus group

2.1.3 Conduct a future-state analysis

Outcomes of this step
Following this step, you will have identified your aspirational maturity level and what your accessibility future state looks like for your organization.

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Cheat sheet: Identify stakeholders

Ask stakeholders, “Who else should I be talking to?” to discover additional stakeholders and ensure you don’t miss anyone.

Categorize your stakeholders with a stakeholder prioritization map

A stakeholder prioritization map helps teams categorize their stakeholders by their level of influence and ownership.

There are four areas in the map, and the stakeholders within each area should be treated differently.

Players – Players have a high interest in the initiative and the influence to effect change over the initiative. Their support is critical, and a lack of support can cause significant impediment to the objectives.

Mediators – Mediators have a low interest but significant influence over the initiative. They can help to provide balance and objective opinions to issues that arise.

Noisemakers – Noisemakers have low influence but high interest. They tend to be very vocal and engaged, either positively or negatively, but have little ability to enact their wishes.

Spectators – Generally, spectators are apathetic and have little influence over or interest in the initiative.

Define strategies for engaging stakeholders by type

Each group of stakeholders draws attention and resources away from critical tasks.

By properly identifying your stakeholder groups, you can develop corresponding actions to manage stakeholders in each group. This can dramatically reduce wasted effort trying to satisfy Spectators and Noisemakers while ensuring the needs of the Mediators and Players are met.

2.1.1 Identify key stakeholders

Collect this information by:

1. List direct stakeholders for your area. Include stakeholders across the organization (both IT and business units) and externally.
2. Create a stakeholder map to capture your stakeholders’ interest in and influence on digital accessibility.
3. Shortlist stakeholders to invite as focus group participants in activity 2.1.2.
   • Aim for a combination of Players, Mediators, and Noisemakers.

Hold a focus group to initiate planning

Involve key stakeholders to determine the organizational drivers of accessibility, identify target maturity and key performance indicators (KPIs), and ultimately build the project charter.

Building the project charter as a group will help you to clarify your key messages and secure buy-in from critical stakeholders up-front, which is key.

Executing the business case for accessibility requires significant involvement from your IT leadership team. The challenge is that accessibility can be overwhelming because of inherent bias. Members of your IT leadership team will also need to participate in knowledge transfer, so get them involved up-front. The focus group will help stakeholders feel more engaged in the project, which is pivotal for success.

You may feel like a full project charter isn’t necessary, and depending on your organizational size, it might not be. However, the exercise of building the charter is important regardless. No matter your current climate, some level of socializing the value of and plans for accessibility will be necessary.

Meeting Agenda

1. Short introduction
   Led by: Project Sponsor
   • Why the initiative is being considered.
2. Make the case for the project
   Led by: Project Manager
   • Current state: What does the initiative address?
   • Future state: What is our target state of maturity?
3. Success criteria
   Led by: Project Manager
   • How will success be measured?
4. Define the project team
   Led by: Project Manager
   • Description of planned approach.
   • Stakeholder assessment.
   • What is required of the sponsor and stakeholders?
5. Determine next steps
   Led by: Project Manager

2.1.2 Hold a stakeholder focus group

Identify the pain points you want to resolve and some of the benefits that you’d like to see from a program. By doing so, you’ll get a holistic view of what you need to achieve and what your drivers are.

1. Ask the working group participants (as a whole or in smaller groups) to discuss pain points created by inaccessibility.
   • Challenges related to stakeholders.
   • Challenges created by process issues.
   • Difficulties improving accessibility practices.
2. Discuss opportunities to be gained from improving these practices.
3. Have participants write these down on sticky notes and place them on a whiteboard or flip chart.
4. Review all the points as a group. Group challenges and benefits into themes.
5. Have the group prioritize the risks and benefits in terms of what the solution must have, should have, could have, and won’t have.

While defining future state, consider your drivers

The Info-Tech Accessibility Maturity Framework identifies three key strategic drivers: compliance, experience, and incorporation.

• Over 30% of organizations are focused on compliance, according to a 2022 survey by Harvard Business Review and Slack’s Future Forum. The survey asked more than 10,000 workers in six countries about their organizations’ approach to DEI.²

Even though 90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity,¹ over 30% are focused on compliance.²

1. Harvard Business Review, 2020
2. Harvard Business Review, 2022

31.6% of companies remain in the Compliant stage, where they are focused on DEI compliance and not on integrating DEI throughout the organization or on creating continual improvement.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 2022

Align the benefits of program drivers to organizational goals or outcomes

Although there will be various motivating factors, aligning the drivers of your accessibility program provides direction to the program. Connecting the advantages of program drivers to organizational goals builds the confidence of senior leaders and decision makers, increasing the continued commitment to invest in accessibility programming.

Info-Tech Accessibility Maturity Framework

After initially ensuring your organization is compliant with regulations and standards, you will progress to building disciplined process and consistent standardized processes. Eventually you will build the ability for predictable process, and lastly, you’ll optimize by continuously improving.

Depending on the level of maturity you are trying to achieve, it could take months or even years to implement. The important thing to understand, however, is that accessibility work is never done.

At all levels of the maturity framework, you must consider the interconnected aspects of people, process, and technology. However, as the organization progresses, the impact will shift from largely being focused on process and technology improvement to being focused on people.

Info-Tech Insight
IT typically works through maturity frameworks from the bottom to the top, progressing at each level until they reach the end. When it comes to digital accessibility initiatives, being especially thorough, thoughtful, and collaborative is critical to success. This will mean spending more time in the Developing, Defined, and Managed levels of maturity rather than trying to reach Optimized as quickly as you can. This may feel contrary to what IT historically considers as a successful implementation.

Accessibility maturity levels

2.1.3 Conduct future-state analysis

Identify your target state of maturity

1. Provide the group with your maturity assessment results to review as well as the slides on the maturity levels, framework, and drivers.
2. Compare the benefits listed on the Accessibility maturity levels slide to those that you named in the previous exercise and determine which maturity level best describes your target state.
3. Discuss as a group and agree on one desired maturity level to reach.
4. Review the other levels of maturity and determine what is in and out of scope for the project (higher-level benefits would be considered out of scope).
5. Document your target state of maturity in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Case Study

Accessibility as a differentiator

INDUSTRY
Financial

SOURCE
WAI-Engage

Step 2.2

Define your accessibility program goals and objectives

Activities

2.2.1 Create a list of goals and objectives

2.2.2 Finalize key metrics

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Outcomes of this step
You will have clear measurable goals and objectives to respond to identified accessibility issues and organizational goals.

What does a good goal look like?

Use the SMART framework to build effective goals.

SMART is a common framework for setting effective goals. Make sure your goals satisfy these criteria to ensure you can achieve real results.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

2.2.1 Create a list of goals and objectives

Use the outcomes from activity 2.1.2.

1. Using the prioritized list of what your solution must have, should have, could have, and won’t have from activity 2.1.2, develop goals.
2. Remember to use the SMART goal framework to build out each goal (see the previous slide for more information on SMART goals).
3. Ensure each goal supports departmental and organizational goals to ensure it is meaningful.
4. Document your goals and objectives in your Accessibility Business Case Template.

Establish Baseline Metrics

Baseline metrics will be improved through:

1. Progressing through the accessibility maturity model.
2. Addressing accessibility earlier in processes to avoid tech debt and rework late in projects or releases.
3. Making accessibility part of the procurement process as a scoring consideration and vendor choice.
4. Ensuring compliance with regulations and standards.

For more metrics ideas, see the Info-Tech IT Metrics Library.

2.2.2 Finalize key metrics

Finalize key metrics the organization will use to measure accessibility success

1. Brainstorm how you would measure the success of each goal based on the benefits, challenges, and risks you previously identified.
2. Write each of the metric ideas down and finalize three to five key metrics which you will track. The metrics you choose should relate to the key challenges or risks you have identified and match your desired maturity level and driver.
3. Document your key metrics in the Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Step 2.3

Document accessibility program roles and responsibilities

Activities

2.3.1 Populate a RACI chart

Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In

Outcomes of this step
At the end of this step, you will have a completed RACI chart documenting the roles and responsibilities related to accessibility for your accessibility business case.

2.3.1 Populate a RACI

Populate a RACI chart to identify who should be responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each key activity.

Define who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for the project team:

1. Write out the list of all stakeholders along the top of a whiteboard. Write out the key project steps along the left-hand side.
2. For each initiative, identify each team member’s role. Are they:
   Responsible: The one responsible for getting the job done.
   Accountable: Only one person can be accountable for each task.
   Consulted: Are involved by providing knowledge.
   Informed: Receive information about execution and quality.
3. As you proceed, continue to add tasks and assign responsibility to the RACI chart in the appendix of the Accessibility Business Case Template.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Phase 3

Prepare your business case and get approval

Phase 1
1.1 Understand standards and legislation
1.2 Build awareness
1.3 Understand maturity level

Phase 2
2.1 Define desired future state
2.2 Define goals and objectives
2.3 Document roles and responsibilities

Phase 3
3.1 Prepare business case template for presentation and approval
3.2 Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

The Accessibility Business Case for IT

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Compiling the work and learning you’ve done so far into a business case presentation.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Project lead/sponsor
• Senior leaders/approval authority

There is a business case for accessibility

• When planning for initiatives, a business case is a necessary tool. Although it can feel like an administrative exercise, it helps create a compelling argument to senior leaders about the benefits and necessity of building an accessibility program.
• No matter the industry, you need to justify how the budget and effort you require for the initiative support organizational goals. However, senior leaders of different industries might be motivated by different reasons. For example, government is strongly motivated by legal and equity aspects, commercial companies may be attracted to the increase in innovation or market reach, and educational and nonprofit companies are likely motivated by brand enhancement.
• The organizational focus and goals will guide your business case for accessibility. Highlight the most relevant benefits to your operational landscape and the risk of inaction.

Source: WAI, 2018

“Many organizations are waking up to the fact that embracing accessibility leads to multiple benefits – reducing legal risks, strengthening brand presence, improving customer experience and colleague productivity.”
– Paul Smyth, Head of Digital Accessibility, Barclays
Source: WAI, 2018

Step 3.1

Customize and populate the Accessibility Business Case Template

Activities

3.1.1 Prepare your business case template for presentation and approval

Build Your Business Case

Outcomes of this step
Following this step, you will have a customized business case presentation that you can present to senior leaders.

Use Info-Tech’s template to communicate with stakeholders

Obtain approval for your accessibility program by customizing Info-Tech’s Accessibility Business Case Template, which is designed to effectively convey your key messages. Tailor the template to suit your needs.

It includes:

• Project context
• Project scope and objectives
• Knowledge transfer roadmap
• Next steps

Info-Tech Insight
The support of senior leaders is critical to the success of your accessibility program development. Remind them of the benefits and impact and the risks associated with inaction.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

3.1.1 Prepare a presentation for senior leaders to gain approval

Now that you understand your current and desired accessibility maturity, the next step is to get sign-off to begin planning your initiatives.

Know your audience:

1. Consider who will be included in your presentation audience.
2. You want your presentation to be succinct and hard-hitting. Management’s time is tight, and they will lose interest if you drag out the delivery. Impact them hard and fast with the challenges, benefits, and risks of inaction.
3. Contain the presentation to no more than an hour. Depending on your audience, the actual presentation delivery could be quite short. You want to ensure adequate time for questions and answers.
4. Schedule a meeting with the key decision makers who will need to approve the initiatives (IT leadership team, executive team, the board, etc.) and present your business case.

Download the Accessibility Business Case Template

Step 3.2

Validate post-approval steps and establish timelines

Activities

3.2.1 Prepare for implementation: Complete the implementation prep to-do list and assign proposed timelines

Build Your Business Case

Outcomes of this step
This step will help you gain leadership’s approval to move forward with building and implementing the accessibility program.

Prepare to implement your program

Complete the to-do list to ensure you are ready to move your accessibility program forward.

3.2.1 Prep for implementation (action planning)

Use the implementation prep to-do list to make sure you have gathered relevant information and completed critical steps to be ready for success.

Use the list on the previous slide to make sure you are set up for implementation success and that you’re ready to move your accessibility program forward.

1. Assign proposed timelines to each of the items.
2. Work through the list, collecting or completing each item.
3. As you proceed, keep your identified drivers, current state, desired future state, goals, and objectives in mind.

Related Info-Tech Research

Implement and Mature Your User Experience Design Practice

• Create a practice that is focused on human outcomes; it starts and ends with the people you are designing for. This includes:
  • Establishing a practice with a common vision.
  • Enhancing the practice through four design factors.
  • Communicating a roadmap to improve your business through design.

Modernize Your Corporate Website to Drive Business Value

• Users are demanding more valuable web functionalities and improved access to your website services.
• The criteria of user acceptance and satisfaction involves more than an aesthetically pleasing user interface (UI). It also includes how emotionally attached the user is to the website and how it accommodates user behaviors.

IT Diversity & Inclusion Tactics

• Although inclusion is key to the success of a diversity and inclusion (D&I) strategy, the complexity of the concept makes it a daunting pursuit.
• This is further complicated by the fact that creating inclusion is not a one-and-done exercise. Rather, it requires the ongoing commitment of employees and managers to reassess their own behaviors and to drive a cultural shift.

Fix Your IT Culture

• Go beyond value statements to create a culture that enables the departmental strategy.
• There is confusion about how to translate culture from an abstract concept to something that is measurable, actionable, and process driven.
• Organizations lack clarity about who is accountable and responsible for culture, with groups often pointing fingers at each other.

Works cited

“2021 State of Digital Accessibility.” Level Access, n.d. Accessed 10 Aug. 2022

”2022 Midyear Report: ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuits.” UsableNet, 2022. Accessed 9 Nov. 2022

“Barclay’s Bank Case Study.” WAI-Engage, 12 Sept. 2018. Accessed 7 Nov. 2022.

Bilodeau, Howard, et al. “StatCan COVID-19 Data to Insights for a Better Canada.” Statistics Canada, 24 June 2021. Accessed 10 Aug. 2022.

Casey, Caroline. “Do Your D&I Efforts Include People With Disabilities?” Harvard Business Review, 19 March 2020. Accessed 28 July 2022.

Digitalisation World. “Organisations failing to meet digital accessibility standards.” Angel Business Communications, 19 May 2022. Accessed Oct. 2022.

“disability.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disability. Accessed 10 Aug. 2022.

“Disability.” World Health Organization, 2022. Accessed 10 Aug 2022.

“Driving the Accessibility Advantage at Accenture.” Accenture, 2022. Accessed 7 Oct. 2022.

eSSENTIAL Accessibility. The Must-Have WCAG 2.1 Checklist. 2022

Hopewell, May. Accessibility in the Workplace. 2022.

“Initiate.” W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 31 March 2016. Accessed 18 Aug. 2022.

Kalcevich, Kate, and Mike Gifford. “How to Bake Layers of Accessibility Testing Into Your Process.” Smashing Magazine, 26 April 2021. Accessed 31 Aug. 2022.

Noone, Cat. “4 Common Ways Companies Alienate People with Disabilities.” Harvard Business Review, 29 Nov. 2021. Accessed Jul. 2022.

Taylor, Jason. “A Record-Breaking Year for ADA Digital Accessibility Lawsuits.” UsableNet, 21 December 2020. Accessed Jul. 2022.

“The Business Case for Digital Accessibility.” W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 9 Nov. 2018. Accessed 4 Aug. 2022.

“The WebAIM Million.” Web AIM, 31 March 2022. Accessed 28 Jul. 2022.

Washington, Ella F. “The Five Stages of DEI Maturity.” Harvard Business Review, November - December 2022. Accessed 7 Nov. 2022.

Wyman, Nicholas. “An Untapped Talent Resource: People With Disabilities.” Forbes, 25 Feb. 2021. Accessed 14 Sep. 2022.

Implement a Transformative IVR Experience That Empowers Your Customers

Learn the strategies that will allow you to develop an effective interactive voice response (IVR) framework that supports self-service and improves customer experience.

Stop! Are you ready for this project?

This Research Is Designed For:

• Business analysts, application directors/managers, and customer service leaders tasked with developing and executing a technology enablement strategy for optimizing their contact center approach.
• Any organization aiming to improve its customer experience by implementing a customer-centric approach to over-the-phone service via an IVR system.

This Research Will Help You:

• Adopt the best strategies for outlining an effective IVR approach and for transforming an existing IVR system.
• Improve customer experience and ultimately customer satisfaction by enabling you to create a more efficient IVR call flow tree.
• Select the proper IVR strategies to focus on based on the maturity level of your organization's call center.
• Review the "art of the possible" and learn of the latest developments in successful IVR execution.
• Learn IT's role in developing a successful IVR system and in developing a technology strategy that optimizes your IVR approach.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Today's customers expect a top-tier experience when interacting with businesses.
• The advancements in IVR technology mean that IT departments are managing added complexity in drafting a strategy for a top-tier IVR approach.
• Implementing best practices and the right enabling technology stack is critical to supporting world-class customer experience through IVR.

Common Obstacles

• Many organizations do not have a clear understanding of customers' drivers for contacting their IVR.
• As many contact centers look to improve the customer experience, the need for an impactful IVR system has markedly increased. The proliferation of recommendations for IVR best practices and related technologies has made it difficult to identify and implement the right approach.
• With a growing number of IVR-related requests, IT must be prepared to speak intelligently about requirements and the "art of the possible."

Info-Tech's Approach

• Before selecting and deploying technology solutions, create a database of common customer call drivers to act as an outline for the call flow tree.
• Understand and apply operational best practices, such as ensuring proper call menu organization and using self-service applications, to improve IVR metrics and, ultimately, the customer experience.
• Understand evolving trends and emerging technologies in the IVR space, including offering personalized service and using natural language processing/conversational AI.

Info-Tech Insight

Tailor your IVR system specifically for your customers. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Understand your key customers and support their experience by implementing the most effective strategies for them.

Voice is still the dominant way in which customers choose to receive support

Despite the contrary beliefs that the preference for phone support and IVR systems is declining, studies have consistently shown that consumers still prefer receiving customer service over the phone.

Your IVR approach can make or break your customers' experience

The feelings that customers are left with after interacting with contact centers and support lines has a major impact on their future purchase decisions

Effective IVR systems provide customers with positive experiences, keeping them happy and satisfied. Poorly executed IVR systems leave customers feeling frustrated and contribute to an overall negative experience. Negative experiences with your IVR system could lead to your customers taking their business elsewhere.

In fact, research by Haptik shows that an average of $262 per customer is lost each year due to poor IVR experiences ("7 Conversational IVR Trends for 2021 and Beyond," Haptik, 2021).

IVR systems only improve your customers' experience when done properly

There are many common mistakes that organizations make when implementing their own IVR strategies:

1. Offering too many menu options. IVR systems are supposed to allow customers to resolve their inquiries quickly, so it is integral that you organize your menu effectively. Less is more when it comes to your IVR call flow tree.
2. A lack of self-service capabilities. IVR systems are meant to maximize customer service and improve the customer experience by offering self-service functionality. If resolutions for common issues can't be found through IVR, your return on investment (ROI) is limited.
   
3. Having callers get stuck in an "IVR loop." Customers caught hearing the same information repeatedly will often abandon their call. Don't allow customers to get "tangled" in your call flow tree; always make human contact an option.
   
4. Not offering personalized service. The inability to identify customers by their number or other identifying features leads to poor personalization and time wasted repeating information, contributing to an overall negative experience.
   
5. Not updating the IVR system. By not taking advantage of new developments in IVR technology and by not using customer and employee feedback to upgrade your offering, you are missing out on the potential to improve your customers' experience. Complacency kills, and your organization will be at a competitive disadvantage because of it.

Implement a transformative IVR approach that empowers your customers

Call flow trees don't grow overnight; they require commitment, nurturing, and care

1. Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree
   • Your call flow tree will only grow as strong as the roots allow it; begin beneath the surface by understanding the needs of your customers and the goals of your organization first, before building your initial IVR menu.
2. Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out
   • Empower your customers by directing your call flow tree to self-service applications where possible and to live agents when necessary.
3. Let Your Call Flow Tree Flourish
   • Integrate your IVR with other relevant business applications and apply technological developments that align with the needs of your customers and the goals of your organization.
4. Keep Watering Your Call Flow Tree
   • Don't let your call flow tree die! Elicit feedback from relevant stakeholders and develop an iterative review cycle to identify and implement necessary changes to your call flow tree, ensuring continued growth.

IT plays an integral role in supporting the IVR approach

IT is responsible for providing technology enablement of the IVR strategy

While IT may not be involved in organizing the call flow tree itself, their impact on an organization's IVR approach is undeniable. Not only will IT assist with the implementation and integration of your IVR system, they will also be responsible for maintaining the technology on an ongoing basis. As such, IT should be a part of your organization's software selection team, following Info-Tech's methodology for optimizing your software selection process.

• With an understanding of the organization's customer experience management strategy and business goals, IT should be looked toward to:
• Provide insight into the "art of the possible" with IVR systems.
• Recommend enabling technologies relative to your call center's maturity (e.g. agent assist and natural language processing).
• Outline integration capabilities with your existing application portfolio.
• Highlight any security concerns.
• Assist with vendor engagement.
• Take part in stakeholder feedback groups, consulting with agents about their pain points and attempting to solve their problems.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series

of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 5 to 7 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Phase 1

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Building a database of your customers' call drivers
• Developing IVR-related goals and connecting them with your key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Developing the first tier of your IVR menu

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 1.1

Understand Your Customers

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.1.1 Build a database of the reasons why your customers call your contact center

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• List of your customers' call drivers

Help your customers get to where they need to go

Understand which questions customers need answered the most and organize your IVR menu accordingly

• With any IVR system, your primary focus should be creating a simple, easily navigated call flow. You not only want your customers to be able to find the solutions that they are looking for, but you want them to be able to do so easily and quickly.
• In order to direct customers more efficiently, you need to understand why they're motivated to call your contact center. This will be different for every organization, so it requires a deeper understanding of your customers.
• After understanding the motivators behind your customers' reasons for calling, you'll be able to organize your call flow tree effectively.
• Assign the most popular reasons that customers call first in your IVR call flow. Organizing your call flow in such a way will ensure a quicker turn around time for customer inquiries, providing callers with the immediate resolution that they are seeking.

"Call flows are the structure of a call center's interactive voice response (IVR). They define the path a caller takes to reach a resolution. The more efficient the flow, the quicker a resolution can be – thereby delivering a better caller experience."

Thomas Randall, Ph.D.
Senior Research Analyst
Info-Tech Research Group

1.1.1 Activity: Build a list of the most common reasons that your key customers call your contact center

30 minutes

1. As a group, review the reasons that customers call your contact center. This includes reviewing which questions are asked most frequently, what services are most often inquired about, and what pain points and complaints live agents hear most regularly.
2. Organize each call driver from most to least popular based on how often they are heard.
3. Record your findings.

Info-Tech Insight

To understand why your customers are calling, first you need to know who your customers are. Improve your caller understanding by creating customer personas.

1.1.1 Activity: Build a list of the most common reasons that your key customers call your contact center

Example

Step 1.2

Develop Goals for Your IVR

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.2.1 Outline IVR-related goals relevant to your organization.

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Goals for your organizational IVR

Create IVR-related goals you wish for your organization to achieve

Organizations across different industries will measure success in a multitude of ways; develop goals that are relevant to your needs and desires

Based on your customer experience strategy and what industry you're in, the goals that you aim to accomplish will look different. A doctor's office will be more concerned with an accurate diagnosis and high first call resolution rate than low average talk time!

Setting business goals relevant to your organization is only half of the battle; it's just as important to hold your organization accountable to those goals and measure your continued progress toward meeting them.

1.2.1 Activity: Brainstorm a list of goals that you would like your organization to achieve when optimizing your IVR approach

30 minutes

1. In two to three groups, brainstorm goals related to your IVR that are relevant to your organization.
2. Classify these goals as being either quick wins or part of a longer-term engagement based on the time they would take to accomplish.
3. Introduce your goals to the entire group, coming to an agreement on the top goals that the organization should aim to achieve through implementing a new/transformed IVR approach.

1.2.1 Activity: Brainstorm a list of goals that you would like your organization to achieve when optimizing your IVR approach

Example

Step 1.3

Align Your Goals With Your KPIs

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.3.1 Review your organizational IVR goals and connect them with your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Metrics used to measure organizational success related to your IVR

Ensure you are using the proper metrics for measuring the success of your call flow tree

You won't know if your IVR is operating successfully if you don't know what success looks like for you. It is important to align your contact center KPIs with your business goals so you can hold your IVR system accountable.

Example

1.3.1 Activity: Develop KPIs for your contact center and connect them to your organization's business goals

30 minutes

1. As a group, establish the metrics or KPIs that will be used to measure your progress against the organizational IVR goals created in Activity 1.2.1.
2. Take note of your current score for each of your organizational goals and determine your target score.
3. Attach a deadline or target date by which you would like to reach your target score. Target dates can vary based on whether your goal is classified as a quick win or part of a longer-term engagement.

Step 1.4

Build Your Initial IVR Menu

This step will walk you through the following activity:

1.4.1 Develop the first tier of your IVR menu, determining the initial selections that customers will have to choose from

Focus on the Roots of Your Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Tier one of your IVR call flow tree

Keep your IVR concise – minimize the length of your voice prompts and limit the depth of your menus

You don't want to overload your customers with information. Providing your callers with overly detailed prompts and too many menu options will only lead to frustration, ultimately diminishing both the efficiency and the effectiveness of your IVR. Limiting the length of your voice prompts and the depth of your menus will lay out a clear path for your callers, increasing the likelihood that they are able to navigate your IVR accurately.

Each of your IVR menus should provide your customers with no more than five selections.

Your IVR should offer a maximum of three menu tiers.

Each of your selection "descriptions" or voice prompts should be no longer than four seconds in length.

Info-Tech Insight

According to a study by Telzio (2020), introductory IVR messages that greet your customers and identify your company should be under 7.9 seconds in length. Longer introductions will only bore, frustrate, and overload the customer before the call really even begins.

When developing your voice prompts, it is integral to speak clearly using simple and easily understood language

• Speak clearly and stay away from industry-specific jargon to ensure that your voice prompts are widely understood by your customer base. This will allow callers to digest the information relayed through your IVR more accurately.
• Part of increasing the retention of information communicated through your IVR is also ensuring that sufficient pauses are taken between each of your voice prompts. Just as you want to avoid overloading your customers with voice prompts that are too long and too detailed, you also want to give your callers adequate time to process the information that is being relayed to them.
• Improving the ease of listening to your IVR will reduce the risk of overwhelming your callers and will increase the likelihood that they are able to follow along appropriately, directing themselves down the proper call flow.

Info-Tech Insight

Securing voice talent and be expensive and cumbersome. Consider using an automated voice through a text-to-speech solution for your prompts. This will ensure that all your prompts are consistent throughout your menus, and it also makes it significantly easier to provide crucial updates within your IVR system.

When sufficient pauses are taken between menu options, input errors can be reduced by over…

Source: Ansafone Contact Centers, 2019

1.4.1 Activity: Begin building your call flow tree by developing the initial selections that customers will choose from when dialing into your IVR

30 minutes

1. Review the database of customer call drivers completed in Activity 1.1.1 to create the opening menu of your IVR call flow tree.
2. Limit your selections/prompts to a maximum of five by grouping related questions, services, and complaints/pain points into broad categories.
3. Organize your selections/prompts according to how often customers call in relating to that topic.

Info-Tech Insight

Remember: You don't need five selections! That is the maximum recommended number of prompts to use and will most likely be reserved for more complex call flows. More isn't always better. If you can limit your initial menu to fewer selections, then do so.

1.4.1 Activity: Begin building your call flow tree by developing the initial selections that customers will choose from when dialing into your IVR

Example

Phase 2

Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Completing the second tier of your call flow tree
• Completing the third and final tier of your call flow tree

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 2.1

Build the Second Tier of Your IVR Menu

This step will walk you through the following activity:

• 2.1.1 Complete the second tier of your call flow tree, branching out from your initial menu

Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Tier 2 of your IVR call flow tree

An IVR system should empower your customers to solve problems on their own

Integrate business applications into your IVR menus to enable self-service capabilities and automate processes where possible

• An IVR system should assist your customer service team while also empowering your customers. This can be accomplished through offering self-service and using automated messaging via a broadcast messaging system.
• Some common self-service practices include providing callers with the ability to check credit card statements, pay bills, and track shipments.
• Automated messaging can be used to address common customer questions. For instance, if a company-wide issue exists, an automated message can outline the issue and highlight the approximate time for resolution, providing customers with the answer they were seeking while eliminating the need to speak to a live agent. This technique is commonly practiced by internet providers during outages.
• Providing callers with the opportunity to find a resolution for themselves through self-service and automated messaging not only improves the customer experience but also frees up your customer service team for more pressing matters.

Source: Raffle, 2020

2.1.1 Activity: Grow your call flow tree! Begin branching out from your initial menu options and develop the second tier of your IVR system

30 minutes

1. Branch out from your initial IVR menu created in Activity 1.4.1. Get more specific in your prompts, branching out from the general groupings you have created.
2. Consult with your database of customer call drivers created in Activity 1.1.1 to organize your subgroupings, again prioritizing the services most sought and the questions, complaints, and pain points most frequently heard.
3. Limit each subsection to a maximum of five prompts.

Info-Tech Insight

Always provide your callers with the option to go back to a previous menu or to have menu options repeated.

2.1.1 Activity: Grow your call flow tree! Begin branching out from your initial menu options and develop the second tier of your IVR system

Example

Step 2.2

Build the Third Tier of Your IVR Menu

This step will walk you through the following activity:

2.2.1 Complete your call flow tree by branching out your third and final tier of menu options.

Allow Customers the Opportunity to Branch Out

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Third and final tier of your IVR call flow tree

Provide your callers with the option to speak to a live agent – but not too soon

While promoting self-service and automating certain processes will improve the functionality of your IVR, it is also important to realize that some issues will ultimately require human intervention. An effective IVR system harmonizes these concepts by making human contact an option, but not too early in the process. You need to find the right balance!

When organizing your IVR call flow tree, you need to be conscious of sending clients in an endless "IVR loop." You should never have your IVR continually repeat its menu options. Customers will abandon an IVR if they are stuck in an IVR loop, being forced to listen to the same information repeatedly without having a way to reach an agent.

If a problem cannot be solved within three steps or by the third tier of your IVR menus, callers should be provided with the option to speak to a live agent, if not automatically routed to one. By providing your callers with the option to speak to a live agent on the third tier of your IVR, you are still offering ample time for customers to discover an avenue to solve their issue on their own through self-service, without frustrating them by losing them in an endless loop of IVR options.

Source: ProProfs Chat, 2022

Info-Tech Insight

Consider routing callers to a live agent not only on the third tier of your IVR menus but also after three input errors. Multiple input errors can show an eagerness to speak to a representative or a strong misunderstanding of the IVR offering.

How you direct a customer to a live agent can make all the difference

Don't think that just offering your customers the option to speak to a live agent is enough. When aiming to significantly improve your customers' experience, how you direct calls to your live agents plays a major role. When a call is being directed to a live agent, be sure to:

• Optimize your call routing and minimize call transfers. Use skills-based routing to direct your incoming client calls to the most suitable agent to resolve their issue. Inaccurately routing callers through your IVR leads to having to transfer the customer to another agent, which is a major contributor to a negative customer experience.
• Include wait-time expectations and call-back functionality. There is no denying it: Waiting on hold can be a real pain. If a customer needs to go on hold, inform them of where they are in the queue and what the approximate wait time is. A little transparency can go a long way. You should also provide customers with the option to have a representative call them back. This greatly improves the customer experience, particularly when wait times are long.
• Play useful on-hold messages. If a customer does decide to wait on the line to speak to a representative, ensure your on-hold messaging doesn't negatively impact their experience. Always have multiple songs and messages available to cycle through to limit customer annoyance. For on-hold messages, consider mentioning self-service capabilities available on other channels or providing company news and information on special promotions. Know your key customer demographics and plan your on-hold messaging accordingly.

2.2.1 Activity: Complete your call flow tree!

30 minutes

1. Branch out from the second tier of your IVR call flow tree created in Activity 2.1.1, connecting relevant prompts with self-service applications and automated responses. Keep in mind, most of your frequently asked questions can and should be directed toward an automated response.
2. Direct all remaining prompts to a live agent, ensuring each selection from your second-tier menu is capped off appropriately.

Info-Tech Insight

Remember: Your IVR system doesn't live in isolation. The information offered by your IVR, particularly from automated messages, should be consistent with information found within other resources (e.g. online knowledge bases).

2.2.1 Activity: Complete your call flow tree!

Example

Phase 3

Let Your IVR Call Flow Tree Flourish

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Reviewing the benefits of offering personalized service
• Reviewing new technologies offered in the IVR space

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 3.1

Learn the Benefits of a Personalized IVR

This step will walk you through the following activity:

3.1.1 Review the benefits of offering personalized service, namely by connecting your IVR system with your customer knowledge base

Let Your IVR Call Flow Tree Flourish

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding the importance of offering personalized service

Personalizing service is integral for improving your customer experience

Integrate your IVR system with your customer relationship management (CRM) system or customer knowledge base of choice to provide support to your customers on a personal level.

The integration of your IVR system with your CRM or other applicable knowledge base allows for customer data (e.g. customer history and previous interactions) to be accessible to your staff during calls. Access to this data allows for a deeper understanding of your customers and for personalization of service. This provides immediate benefits to your contact center that will improve your customer experience.

When you inevitably do need to transfer a customer to another agent, they won't have to repeat their issue to a new representative, as all their information will now be easily accessible. Being forced to repeat themselves to multiple agents is a major cause of frustration for customers. This integration would also allow you to route callers to the previous agent that they dealt with whenever possible for the purpose of continuity, and it would enable you to implement other beneficial technologies as well.

One such example is "agent assist." Agent assist is an AI bot that listens in on calls, learning customer context and automatically searching knowledge bases to help resolve queries without the agent having to put the caller on hold to manually perform that work themselves. Not only does agent assist improve customer resolution times, but it also ramps up onboarding time, allowing for new agents to enter the workforce and perform with confidence earlier.

Personalization can empower your IVR in many ways

Personalizing your IVR does much more than just provide your customer service representatives with conversational context. Personalization enables your IVR to recognize callers by their phone number, or even by voice via biometric authentication technologies.

This advanced level of recognition allows your IVR to greet your callers by name, speak to them in their preferred language, send follow-up correspondence to their preferred method of communication (i.e. email or SMS), and even provide them with contact numbers and addresses for your organization's physical locations that are closest to them.

An example of a more advanced functionality is having your IVR call flow personalized for each customer based on their call history. As customers call in, their data is collected, ultimately improving your IVR's ability to predict and understand caller intent. This makes personalized call flows possible. If customers typically call in to make payments, your IVR can logically deduce that their next call will be for the same reason, and it will alter the call menu to direct them to that functionality more efficiently.

Step 3.2

Review New Technology to Apply to Your IVR

This step will walk you through the following activity:

3.2.1 Review new technologies offered in the IVR space and understand their impact

Let Your IVR Call Flow Tree Flourish

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of key technologies

Let your customers tell you exactly what they need

Use natural language processing and conversational AI to further advance your IVR offering

Instead of making your customers work their way through your call flow tree to find out what they need, why not just ask them? Conversational IVR, also known as an "intuitive IVR system," makes this possible.

Think Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa. Your customers can simply tell you what they need and your conversational IVR, using the advancements in natural language processing and conversational AI, will take it from there, directing callers to the resources needed to resolve their issues.

Powerful enough to understand full sentences and not just select words or phrases, the increased intelligence of a conversational IVR system allows it to handle complex customer inquiries. Leveraging machine learning capabilities, the system will only continue to improve its ability to understand caller intent, ultimately leading to increased call routing accuracy as it fields more and more calls.

Info-Tech Insight

Remember: Your customers want fast and easy, not overwhelming and confusing. Some customers who are greeted with an open-ended question from a conversational IVR may not be sure how to respond.

Understand your key customer demographics and act accordingly. It may be beneficial to provide your callers with guidelines of what to say. Outlining appropriate responses that will guide your customers to their desired department quicker will boost their experience with your conversational IVR.

There are a lot of benefits to implementing a conversational IVR

• Putting your callers in control and offering a more humanized approach, conversational IVRs are the preferred first point of contact for customers.
• Conversational IVRs reduce the time required to reach resolution and can handle more calls than a standard IVR.
• Conversational IVRs allow for the collection of more relevant data. By not limiting callers to predetermined menu options, you can track the reasons behind customers' calls with more accuracy, using this data to drive future IVR developments.
• Conversational IVRs are more cost-effective than standard IVRs. According to a report by IBM, companies world-wide spend over $1.3 trillion to address 256 billion customer calls annually. This means that each call a live agent addresses costs an average of $30 (Cognigy, 2020). With a conversational IVR, that cost can be reduced to one-eighth (ETCIO.com, 2020).
• Conversational IVRs can be handle calls in multiple languages, offering improved scalability for companies operating multi-nationally.

How do you know if a conversational IVR is right for your organization?

Large, enterprise-level organizations that field a high volume of customer calls are more likely to receive the benefits and higher ROI from implementing a conversational IVR

Instead of updating the entire IVR system and implementing a conversational IVR, smaller and mid-level organizations should consider attaching a natural language processing front-end to their existing IVR. Through this, you will be able to reap a lot of the same benefits you would if you were to upgrade to a conversational IVR.

You can attach a natural language processing front-end to your existing IVR in two ways.

1. Use an API to recognize your customer's voice prompts. Greet your customers with a question, such as "what is your reason for calling," as your initial IVR menu, and when your customer answers, their response will be sent to your selected API (Amazon Lex, IBM Watson, Google Dialogflow, etc.). The API will then process the customer's input and direct the caller to the appropriate branch of your call flow tree.
2. Use a conversational AI platform to field your calls. Implement a conversational AI platform to be the first point of contact for your customers. After receiving and analyzing the input from your customers, the platform would then route your callers to your current IVR system and to the appropriate menu, whether that be to an automated message, a self-service application, or a live agent.

Phase 4

Keep Watering Your IVR Call Flow Tree

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Understanding the importance of receiving feedback from relevant stakeholders and the best practices for obtaining feedback
• Understanding the best practices for developing an ongoing review cycle

This phase involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Implement a Transformative IVR Approach That Empowers Your Customers

Step 4.1

Gather Insights on Your IVR's Performance

This step will walk you through the following activity:

4.1.1 Understand the importance of receiving feedback and review the best methods for obtaining it from your clients.

Keep Watering Your IVR Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of the importance of receiving feedback and how to obtain it from customers

Elicit feedback from your employees and from your customers

Your live agents are on the proverbial front lines, fielding calls from customers daily. As such, they are the prime stakeholders for knowing what kinds of calls the organization receives and how often. Their input on the most frequent reasons that customers call, whether it be to address common pain points or to have FAQs answered, is invaluable. Ask them regularly for their feedback on how the IVR system is performing and which updates should be implemented.

While improving the agent experience is a driver behind adopting an IVR system, the focus should always be improving your customer experience. So why wouldn't you ask your customers for their feedback on your IVR offering? Most customers don't only want to be asked to provide feedback, they expect to be asked. Have your agents ask your customers directly about their experience with your IVR or use the functions of your IVR to offer automated end-of-call surveys.

Info-Tech Insight

Many IVR systems are capable of recording calls. Listening back on previous calls is another great way to further understand how your IVR is performing, and it also can provide a glimpse into your customers' experience.

Surveys provide great insight into your customers' level of satisfaction – not only with your IVR but also with your live agents

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a great way to determine how happy callers are with their experiences with your organization. CSAT surveys ask your clients outright how satisfied they are with their recent interaction and have them rate your service on a scale. While straightforward, the feedback received from CSAT surveys is more general and can lack depth.

For more detailed responses, consider asking your clients an open-ended question as opposed to using a rating scale. This will provide you with a more specific understanding of your customers' experience. For this, an IVR system that supports voice transcription is best. Automated speech-to-text functionality will ensure rapid results.

Another option is to offer a survey that includes skip logic. These multi-tiered surveys, much like an IVR call flow tree, direct your callers to different follow-up questions based on their previous answers. While capable of providing more insight into the customer experience, these surveys are only recommended for more complex service offerings.

Customer feedback is vitally important

Asking for feedback makes your callers feel valued, and it also provides your organization with extremely useful information – including an understanding of what you may need to change within your IVR

Step 4.2

Create an Agile Review Method

This step will walk you through the following activity:

4.2.1 Understand the best practices for developing an ongoing review cycle for your IVR approach

Keep Watering Your IVR Call Flow Tree

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (business analysts, application director/manager, customer service leaders)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step

• Understanding of the importance of IVR maintenance and of the development of an iterative review cycle

Create an agile review method to continually enhance your call flows

• Track items
  • Elicit feedback from your key stakeholders (i.e. live agents) as part of a regular review – every month, two months, six months, or year – of your call flow tree's efficiency. Delve into the feedback elicited from your customers at the same intervals. Look for patterns and trends and record items accordingly.
• Manage backlog
  • Store and organize your recorded items into a backlog, prioritizing items to implement in order of importance. This could be structured by way of identifying which items are a quick win vs. which items are part of a more strategic and long-term implementation.
• Perform iteration
  • Record key metric scores and communicate the changes you have planned to stakeholders before you implement items. Then, make the change.
• Be retrospective
  • Examine the success of the implementation by comparing your metric scores from before and after the change. Record instances where performing similar changes could be carried out better in future iterations.

Summary of Accomplishment

• Knowledge Gained
  • Benefits of enabling personalized service
  • IVR-enabling technologies
  • Methods of eliciting feedback
• Processes Optimized
  • IVR voice prompt creation
  • IVR voice prompt organization
  • IVR review cycles
• Deliverables Completed
  • Database of customer call drivers
  • Organizational IVR goals and KPIs
  • IVR call flow tree

Related Info-Tech Research

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	Build a Strong Technology Foundation for Customer Experience Management	Customer expectations around personalization, channel preferences, and speed-to-resolution are at an all-time high. Your customers are willing to pay more for high-value experiences, and having a strong customer experience management (CXM) strategy is a proven path to creating sustainable value for the organization.
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	SoftwareReviews	Accelerate and improve your software selection process with enterprise software reviews. Focus on available resources for communications platform as a service providers and conversational intelligence software.

Bibliography

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"7 Remarkable IVR Trends For the Year 2022 And Beyond." Haptik, 30 Dec. 2021. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"8 IVR Strategies that Keep Customers Happy." Ansafone Contact Centers, 31 May 2019. Accessed 25 April 2022.
"Agent Assist." Speakeasy AI, 19 April 2022. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"AI chatbot that's easy to use." IBM, n.d. Accessed 21 June 2022.
"IVR Trends to Watch in 2020 and Beyond: Inside CX." Intrado, 1 May 2020. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"RIP IVR: 1980-2020." Vonage, 2 June 2020. Accessed 16 June 2022.
Andrea. "What do Customers Want? – 37 Customer Service Statistics." SmallBizGenius, 17 March 2022. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Anthony, James. "106 Customer Service Statistics You Must See: 2021/2022 Data & Analysis." FinancesOnline, 14 Jan. 2022. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Brown, James. "14 stats that prove the importance of self-service in customer service." raffle, 13 Oct. 2020. Accessed 17 June 2022.
Buesing, Eric, et al. "Getting the best customer service from your IVR: Fresh eyes on an old problem." McKinsey & Company, 1 Feb. 2019. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Callari, Ron. "IVR Menus and Best Practices." Telzio, 4 Sep. 2020. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Cornell, Jared. "104 Customer Service Statistics & Facts of 2022." ProProfs Chat, 6 April 2022. Accessed 16 June 2022.
DeCarlo, Matthew. "18 Common IVR Mistakes & How To Configure Effective IVR." GetVoIP, 13 June 2019. Accessed 27 April 2022.
DeMers, Jayson. "77 Customer Service Statistics to Know." EmailAnalytics, 23 March 2022. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Frants, Valeriy. Interview. Conducted by Austin Wagar, 22 June 2022.
Grieve, Patrick. "Personalized customer service: what it is and how to provide it." Zendesk, 28 June 2019. Accessed 27 April 2022.
"How Natural Language Processing Can Help Your Interactive Voice Response System Meet Best Practice." Hostcomm, 15 July 2019. Accessed 25 April 2022.
"IVR and customer experience: get the best UX for your clients." Kaleyra, 14 Dec. 2020. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Irvine, Bill. "Selecting an IVR System for Customer Satisfaction Surveys." IVR Technology Group, 14 April 2020. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Kulbyte, Toma. "Key Customer Experience Statistics to Know." SuperOffice, 24 June 2021. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Leite, Thiago. "What's the Difference Between Standard & Conversational IVR?" Cognigy, 27 Oct. 2020. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Maza, Cristina. "What is IVR? The ultimate guide." Zendesk, 30 Sep. 2020. Accessed 25 April 2022.
McCraw, Corey. "What is IVR Call Flow? Benefits, Features, Metrics & More." GetVoIP, 30 April 2020. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Mircevski, Bruno. "Smart IVR Introduction – What Is It and Why You Should Use It." Ideta, 7 March 2022. Accessed 28 April 2022.
Oriel, Astha. "Artificial Intelligence in IVR: A Step Towards Faster Customer Services." Analytics Insight, 19 Aug. 2020. Accessed 24 May 2022.
Perzynska, Kasia. "What is CSAT & How to Measure Customer Satisfaction?" Survicate, 9 March 2022. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Pratt, Mary K. "How to set business goals, step by step." TechTarget, 27 April 2022. Accessed 21 June 2022.
Robinson, Kerry. "Insight of the Week: Make Your IVR More Like Alexa." Waterfield Tech, 20 April 2022. Accessed 25 April 2022.
Sehgal, Karishma. "Exclusive Research – 76% of customer service teams offer support outside of business hours." Hiver, 4 May 2022. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Smith, Mercer. "111 Customer Service Statistics and Facts You Shouldn't Ignore." Help Scout, 23 May 2022. Accessed 24 June 2022.
Thompson, Adrian. "A Guide to Conversational IVR." The Bot Forge, 27 Jan. 2021. Accessed 21 June 2022.
Tolksdorf, Juergen. " 5 Ways to Leverage AI and Agent-Assist to Improve Customer Experience." Genesys, 19 May 2020. Accessed 27 April 2022.
Vaish, Aakrit. "5 ways conversational IVR is helping businesses revolutionize customer service." ETCIO.com, 20 March 2020. Web.
Westfall, Leah. "Improving customer experience with the right IVR strategy." RingCentral, 23 July 2021. Accessed 25 April 2022.

Manage Exponential Value Relationships

Are you ready to manage outcome-based agreements?

Analyst Perspective

Outcome-based agreements require a higher degree of mutual trust.

Exponential IT brings with it an exciting new world of cutting-edge technology and increasingly accelerated growth of business and IT. But adopting and driving change through this paradigm requires new capabilities to grow impactful and meaningful partnerships with external vendors who can help implement technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Building outcome-based partnerships involves working very closely with vendors who, in many cases, will have just as much to lose as the organizations implementing these new technologies. This requires a greater degree of trust between parties than a standard vendor relationship. It also drastically increases the risks to both organizations; as each loses some control over data and outcomes, they must trust that the other organization will follow through on commitments and obligations. Outcome-based partnerships build upon traditional vendor management practices and create the potential for organizations to embrace emerging technology in new ways. Kim Osborne Rodriguez Research Director, CIO Advisory Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Outcome-based partnerships require a higher degree of trust than traditional vendor relationships. Build trust by sharing risks and rewards.

Vendor relationships can be worth billions of dollars

Positive vendor relationships directly impact the bottom line, sometimes to the tune of billions of dollars annually.

• Organizations typically spend 40% to 80% of their total budget on external suppliers.
• Greater supplier trust translates directly to greater business profits, even in traditional vendor relationships.1
• Based on over a decade of data from vehicle manufacturers, greater supplier relationships nearly doubled the unit profit margin on vehicles, contributing over $20 billion to Toyota’s annual profits based on typical sales volume.2
• Having positive vendor relationships can be instrumental in times of crisis – when scarcity looms, vendors often choose to support their best customers.3,4 For example, Toyota protected itself from the losses many original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) faced in 2020 and showed improved profitability that year due to increased demand for vehicles which it was able to supply as a result of top-ranked vendor relationships.

1 PR Newswire, 2022.
2 Based on 10 years of data comparing Toyota and Nissan, every 1-point increase in the company’s Working Relations Index was correlated with a $15.77 net profit increase per unit. Impact on Toyota annual profits is based on 10.5 million units sold in 2021 and 2022.
3 Interview with Renee Stanley, University of Texas at Arlington. Conducted 17 May 2023.
4 Plante Moran, 2020.

Sources: Macrotrends, Plante Moran 2022, Nissan 2022 and 2023, and Toyota 2022. Profit per car is based on total annual profit divided by total annual sales volume.

Outcome-based relationships are a new paradigm

In a new model where organizations are procuring autonomous capabilities, outcomes will govern vendor relationships.

An outcome-based relationship requires a higher level of mutual trust than traditional vendor relationships. This requires shared reward and shared risk.

Don’t forget about traditional vendor management relationships! Not all vendor relationships can (or should) be outcome-based.

Case study

INDUSTRY: Technology

SOURCE: Press Release

Microsoft and OpenAI partner on Azure, Teams, and Microsoft Office suite

In January 2023, Microsoft announced a $10 billion investment in OpenAI, allowing OpenAI to continue scaling its flagship large language model, ChatGPT, and giving Microsoft first access to deploy OpenAI’s products in services like GitHub, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Teams.

Shared risk

Issues with OpenAI’s platforms could have a debilitating effect on Microsoft’s own reputation – much like Google’s $100 billion stock loss following a blunder by its AI platform Bard – not to mention the financial loss if the platform does not live up to the hype.

Shared reward

This was a particularly important strategic move by Microsoft, as its main competitors develop their own AI models in a race to the top. This investment also gave OpenAI the resources to continue scaling and evolving its services much faster than it would be capable of on its own. If OpenAI’s products succeed, there is a significant upside for both companies.

Adapt your approach to vendor relationships

Both traditional vendors and exponential relationships are important.

Use Info-Tech’s research to Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative.

Common obstacles

Exponential relationships require new approaches to vendor management as businesses autonomize:

• Autonomization refers to the shift toward autonomous business capabilities which leverage technologies such as AI and quantum computing to operate independently of human interaction.
• The speed and complexity of technology advancement requires that businesses move quickly and confidently to develop strong relationships and deliver value.
• We are seeing businesses shift from procuring products and services to procuring autonomous business capabilities (sometimes called “as a service,” or aaS). This shift can drive exponential value but also increases complexity and risk.
• Exponential IT requires a shift in emphasis toward more mature relationship and risk management strategies, compared to traditional vendor management.

The shift from technology service agreements to business capability agreements needs a new approach

Eighty-seven percent of organizations are currently experiencing talent shortages or expect to within a few years.

Source: McKinsey, “Mind the [skills] gap”, 2021.

Sixty-three percent of IT leaders plan to implement AI in their organizations by the end of 2023.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group survey, 2022

Insight summary

Assess your readiness for exponential value relationships

Key deliverable:

Exponential Relationships Readiness Assessment

Determine your readiness to build exponential value relationships.

Measure the value of this blueprint

Save thousands of dollars by leveraging this research to assess your readiness, before you lose millions from a relationship gone bad.

Our research indicates that most organizations would take months to prepare this type of assessment without using our research. That’s over 80 person-hours spent researching and gathering data to support due diligence, for a total cost of thousands of dollars. Doesn’t your staff have better things to do?

Start by answering a few brief questions, then return to this slide at the end to see how much your answers have changed.

Use Info-Tech’s research to Exponential Relationships Readiness Assessment.

Establish a baseline

Gauge the effectiveness of this research by asking yourself the following questions before and after completing your readiness assessment:

How to use this research

Five tips to get the most out of your readiness assessment.

1. Each category consists of five competencies, with a maximum of five points each. The maximum score on this assessment is 100 points.
2. Effectiveness levels range from basic (level 1) to advanced (level 5). Level 1 is generally considered the baseline for most effectively operating organizations. If your organization is struggling with level 1 competencies, it is recommended to improve maturity in those areas before pursuing exponential relationships.
3. This assessment is qualitative; complete the assessment to the best of your ability, based on the scoring rubric provided. If you fall between levels, use the lower one in your assessment.
4. The scoring rubric may not perfectly fit the processes and practices within every organization. Consider the spirit of the description and score accordingly.
5. Other industry- and region-specific competencies may be required to succeed at exponential relationships. The competencies in this assessment are a starting point, and internal validation and assessments should be conducted to uncover additional competencies and skills.

Financial management

Manage your budget and spending to stay on track throughout your relationship.

“Most organizations underestimate the amount of time, money, and skill required to build and maintain a successful relationship with another organization. The investment in exponential relationships is exponential in itself – as are the returns.”

– Jennifer Perrier, Principal Research Director,
Info-Tech Research Group

This step involves the following participants:

• Executive leadership team, including CIO
• CFO
• Vendor management leader
• Other internal stakeholders of vendor relationships

Activities:

• Assess your ability to manage scope and budget in exponential IT relationships.

Successfully manage complex finances

Stay on track and keep your relationship running smoothly.

Why is this important?

• Finance is at the core of most business – it drives decision making, acts as a constraint for innovation and optimization, and plays a key role in assessing options (such as return on investment or payback period).
• Effectively managing finances is a critical success factor in developing strong relationships. Each organization must be able to manage their own budget and spending in order to balance the risk and reward in the relationship. Often, these risks and rewards will come in the form of profit and loss or revenue and spend.

Build it into your practice:

1. Ensure your financial decision-making practices are aligned with the organizational and relationship strategy. Do metrics and criteria reflect the organization’s goals?
2. Develop strong accounting and financial analysis practices – this includes the ability to conduct financial due diligence on potential vendors.
3. Develop consistent methodology to track and report on the desired outcomes on a regular basis.

Build your ability to manage finances

The five competencies needed to manage finances in exponential value relationships are:

Relationship management

Drive exponential value by becoming a customer of choice.

“The more complex the business environment becomes — for instance, as new technologies emerge or as innovation cycles get faster — the more such relationships make sense. And the better companies get at managing individual relationships, the more likely it is that they will become “partners of choice” and be able to build entire portfolios of practical and value-creating partnerships.”

(“Improving the management of complex business partnerships.” McKinsey, 2019)

This step involves the following participants:

• Executive leadership team, including CIO
• Vendor management leader
• Other internal stakeholders of vendor relationships

Activities:

• Assess your ability to manage relationships in exponential IT relationships.

Take your relationships to the next level

Maintaining positive relationships is key to building trust.

Why is this important?

• All relationships will experience challenges, and the ability to resolve these issues will rely heavily on the relationship management skills and soft skills of the leadership within each organization.
• Based on a 20-year study of vendor relationships in the automotive sector, business-to-business trust is a function of reasonable demands, follow-through, and information sharing.

(Source: Plante Moran, 2020)

Build it into your practice:

1. Develop the soft skills necessary to promote psychological safety, growth mindset, and strong and open communication channels.
2. Be smart about sharing information – you don’t need to share everything, but being open about relevant information will enhance trust.
3. Both parties need to work hard to develop trust necessary to build a true relationship. This will require increased access to decision-makers, clearly defined guardrails, and the ability for unsatisfied parties to leave.

Build your ability to manage relationships

The five competencies needed to manage relationships in exponential partnerships are:

Performance management

Outcomes management focuses on results, not methods.

According to Jennifer Robinson, senior editor at Gallup, “This approach focuses people and teams on a concrete result, not the process required to achieve it. Leaders define outcomes and, along with managers, set parameters and guidelines. Employees, then, have a high degree of autonomy to use their own unique talents to reach goals their own way.” (Forbes, 2023)

In the context of exponential relationships, vendors can be given a high degree of autonomy provided they meet their objectives.

This step involves the following participants:

• Executive leadership team, including CIO
• Vendor management leader
• Other internal stakeholders of vendor relationships

Activities:

• Assess your ability to manage outcomes in exponential IT relationships.

Manage outcomes to drive mutual success

Build trust by achieving shared objectives.

Why is this important?

• Relationships are based on shared risk and shared reward for all parties. In order to effectively communicate the shared rewards, you must first understand and communicate your objectives for the relationship, then measure outcomes to ensure all parties are benefiting.
• Effectively managing outcomes reduces the risk that one party will choose to leave based on a perception of benefits not being achieved. Parties may still leave the agreement, but decisions should be based on shared facts and issues should be communicated and addressed early.

Build it into your practice:

1. Clearly articulate what you hope to achieve by entering an outcome-based relationship. Each party should outline and agree to the goals, objectives, and desired outcomes from the relationship.
2. Document how rewards will be shared among parties. What type of rewards are anticipated? Who will benefit and how?
3. Develop consistent methodology to track and report on the desired outcomes on a regular basis. This might consist of a vendor scorecard or a monthly meeting.

Build your ability to manage outcomes

The five competencies needed to manage outcomes in exponential value relationships are:

Risk management

Exponential IT means exponential risk – and exponential rewards.

One of the key differentiators between traditional vendor relationships and exponential relationships is the degree to which risk is shared between parties. This is not possible in all industries, which may limit companies’ ability to participate in this type of exponential relationship.

This step involves the following participants:

• Executive leadership team, including CIO
• Vendor management leader
• Risk management leader
• Other internal stakeholders of vendor relationships

Activities:

• Assess your ability to manage risk in exponential IT relationships.

Relationships come with a lot of hidden risks

Successfully managing complex risks can be the difference between a spectacular success and company-ending failure.

Why is this important?

• Relationships inherently involve a loss of control. You are relying on another party to fulfill their part of the agreement, and you depend on the success of the outcome. Loss of control comes with significant risks.
• Sharing in risk is what differentiates an outcome-based relationship from a traditional vendor relationship; vendors must have skin in the game.
• Organizations must consider many different types of risk when considering a relationship with a vendor: fraud, security, human rights, labor relations, ESG, and operational risks. Remember that risk is not inherently bad; some risk is necessary.

Build it into your practice:

1. Build or hire the necessary risk expertise needed to properly assess and evaluate the risks of potential vendor relationships. This includes intellectual property, ESG, legal/regulatory, cybersecurity, data security, and more.
2. Develop processes and procedures which clearly communicate and report on risk on a regular basis.

Info-Tech Insight

Some highly regulated industries (such as finance) are prevented from transferring certain types of risk. In these industries, it may be much more difficult to form vendor relationships.

Don’t forget about third-party ESG risk

Customers care about ESG. You should too.

Protect yourself against third-party ESG risks by considering the environmental and social impacts of your vendors.

Third-party ESG risks can include the following:

• Environmental risk: Vendors with unsustainable practices such as carbon emissions or waste generation of natural resource depletion can negatively impact the organization’s environmental goals.
• Social risk: Unsafe or illegal labor practices, human rights violations, and supply chain management issues can reflect negatively on organizations that choose to work with vendors who engage in such practices.
• Governance risk: Vendors who engage in illegal or unethical behaviors, including bribery and corruption or data and privacy breaches can impact downstream customers.

Working with vendors that have a poor record of ESG carries a very real reputational risk for organizations who do not undertake appropriate due diligence.

A global survey of nearly 14,000 customers revealed that…

Source: EY Future Consumer Index, 2021

Seventy-seven percent of customers believe companies have a responsibility to manufacture sustainably.

Sixty-eight percent of customers believe businesses should ensure their suppliers meet high social and environmental standards.

Fifty-five percent of customers consider the environmental impact of production in their purchasing decisions.

Build your ability to manage risk

The five competencies needed to manage risk in exponential value relationships are:

Contract management

Contract management is a critical part of vendor management.

Well-managed contracts include clearly defined pricing, performance-based outcomes, clear roles and responsibilities, and appropriate remedies for failure to meet requirements. In outcome-based relationships, contracts are generally used as a secondary method of enforcing performance, with relationship management being the primary method of addressing challenges and ensuring performance.

This step involves the following participants:

• Executive leadership team, including CIO
• Vendor management leader
• Risk management leader
• Other internal stakeholders of vendor relationships

Activities:

• Assess your ability to manage risk in exponential IT relationships.

Build your ability to manage contracts

The five competencies needed to manage contracts in exponential value relationships are:

Activity 1: Assess your readiness for exponential relationships

1-3 hours

1. Gather key stakeholders from across your organization to participate in the readiness assessment exercise.
2. As a group, review the core competencies from the previous four sections and determine where your organization’s effectiveness lies for each competency. Record your responses in the Exponential Relationships Readiness Assessment tool.

Download the Exponential Relationships Readiness Assessment tool.

Understand your assessment

This step involves the following participants:

• Executive leadership team, including CIO
• Vendor management leader
• Other internal stakeholders of vendor relationships

Activities:

• Create an action plan.

Understand the results of your assessment

Consider the following recommendations based on your readiness assessment scores:

• The chart to the right shows sample results. The bars indicate the recommended scores, and the line indicates the readiness score.
• Three or more categories below the recommended scores, or any categories more than five points below the recommendation: outcome-based relationships are not recommended at this time.
• Two or more categories below the recommended scores: Proceed with caution and limit outcome-based relationships to low-risk areas. Continue to mature capabilities.
• One category below the recommended scores: Evaluate the risks and benefits before engaging in higher-risk vendor relationships. Continue to mature capabilities.
• All categories at or above the recommended scores: You have many of the core capabilities needed to succeed at exponential relationships! Continue to evaluate and refine your vendor relationships strategy, and identify any additional competencies needed based on your industry or region.

Activity 2: Create an action plan

1 hour

1. Gather the stakeholders who participated in the readiness assessment exercise.
2. As a group, review the results of the readiness assessment. Where there any surprise? Do the results reflect your understanding of the organization’s maturity?
3. Determine which areas are likely to limit the organization’s relationship capability, based on lowest scoring areas and relative importance to the organization.
4. Break out into groups and have each group identify three actions the organization could take to mature the lowest scoring areas.
5. Bring the group back together and prioritize the actions. Note who will be accountable for each next step.

Related Info-Tech Research

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Understand the value of knowing your account team’s influence in the organization, and your influence, to drive results.

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Mitigate the IT risks that could negatively impact your organization.

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Effective IT budgets are more than a spreadsheet. They tell a story.

Adopt an Exponential IT Mindset
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Author

Kim Osborne Rodriguez Research Director, CIO Advisory Info-Tech Research Group

Kim is a professional engineer and Registered Communications Distribution Designer (RCDD) with over a decade of experience in management and engineering consulting spanning healthcare, higher education, and commercial sectors. She has worked on some of the largest hospital construction projects in Canada, from early visioning and IT strategy through to design, specifications, and construction administration. She brings a practical and evidence-based approach, with a track record of supporting successful projects. Kim holds a Bachelor’s degree in Honours Mechatronics Engineering and an option in Management Sciences from the University of Waterloo.

Research Contributors and Experts

	Jack Hakimian Senior Vice President Info-Tech Research Group Jack has more than 25 years of technology and management consulting experience. He has served multibillion-dollar organizations in multiple industries including financial services and telecommunications. Jack also served several large public sector institutions. He is a frequent speaker and panelist at technology and innovation conferences and events and holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering as well as an MBA from the ESCP-EAP European School of Management.		Michael Tweedie Practice Lead, CIO Strategy Info-Tech Research Group Mike Tweedie brings over 25 years as a technology executive. He’s led several large transformation projects across core infrastructure, application and IT services as the head of Technology at ADP Canada. He was also the Head of Engineering and Service Offerings for a large French IT services firm, focused on cloud adoption and complex ERP deployment and management. Mike holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Ryerson University.
	Scott Bickley Practice Lead, VCCO Info-Tech Research Group Scott Bickley is a Practice Lead & Principal Research Director at Info-Tech Research Group, focused on Vendor Management and Contract Review. He also has experience in the areas of IT Asset Management (ITAM), Software Asset Management (SAM), and technology procurement along with a deep background in operations, engineering, and quality systems management. Scott holds a B.S. in Justice Studies from Frostburg State University. He also holds active IAITAM certification designations of CSAM and CMAM and is a Certified Scrum Master (SCM).		Donna Bales Principal Research Director Info-Tech Research Group Donna Bales is a Principal Research Director in the CIO Practice at Info-Tech Research Group, specializing in research and advisory services in IT risk, governance, and compliance. She brings over 25 years of experience in strategic consulting and product development and has a history of success in leading complex, multistakeholder industry initiatives. Donna has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Western Ontario.

Research Contributors and Experts

Jennifer Perrier Principal Research Director Info-Tech Research Group Jennifer has 25 years of experience in the information technology and human resources research space, joining Info-Tech in 1998 as the first research analyst with the company. Over the years, she has served as a research analyst and research manager, as well as in a range of roles leading the development and delivery of offerings across Info-Tech’s product and service portfolio, including workshops and the launch of industry roundtables and benchmarking. She was also Research Lead for McLean & Company, the HR advisory division of Info-Tech, during its start-up years. Jennifer’s research expertise spans the areas of IT strategic planning, governance, policy and process management, people management, leadership, organizational change management, performance benchmarking, and cross-industry IT comparative analysis. She has produced and overseen the development of hundreds of publications across the full breadth of both the IT and HR domains in multiple industries. In 2022, Jennifer joined Info-Tech’s IT Financial Management Practice with a focus on developing financial transparency to foster meaningful dialogue between IT and its stakeholders and drive better technology investment decisions.

Phil Bode Principal Research Director Info-Tech Research Group Phil has 30+ years of experience with IT procurement-related topics: contract drafting and review, negotiations, RFXs, procurement processes, and vendor management. Phil has been a frequent speaker at conferences, a contributor to magazine articles in CIO Magazine and ComputerWorld, and quoted in many other magazines. He is a co-author of the book The Art of Creating a Quality RFP. Phil has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a double major of Finance and Entrepreneurship and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a major of Accounting, both from the University of Arizona.

Research Contributors

Erin Morgan Assistant Vice President, IT Administration University of Texas at Arlington

Renee Stanley Assistant Director IT Procurement and Vendor Management University of Texas at Arlington

Note: Additional contributors did not wish to be identified.

Bibliography

Andrea, Dave. “Plante Moran’s 2022 Working Relations Index® (WRI) Study shows supplier relations can improve amid industry crisis.” Plante Moran, 25 Aug 2022. Accessed 18 May 2023.
Andrea, Dave. “Trust between suppliers and OEMs can better prepare you for the next crisis.” Plante Moran, 9 Sept 2020. Accessed 17 May 2023.
Cleary, Shannon, and Carolan McLarney. “Organizational Benefits of an Effective Vendor Management Strategy.” IUP Journal of Supply Chain Management, Vol. 16, Issue 4, Dec 2019.
De Backer, Ruth, and Eileen Kelly Rinaudo. “Improving the management of complex business partnerships.” McKinsey, 21 March 2019. Accessed 9 May 2023 .
Dennean, Kevin et al. “Let's chat about ChatGPT.” UBS, 22 Feb 2023. Accessed 26 May 2023.
F&I Tools. “Nissan Worldwide Vehicle Sales Report.” Factory Warranty List, 2022. Accessed 18 May 2023.
Gomez, Robin. “Adopting ChatGPT and Generative AI in Retail Customer Service.” Radial, 235, April 2023. Accessed 10 May 2023.
Harms, Thomas and Kristina Rogers. “How collaboration can drive value for you, your partners and the planet.” EY, 26 Oct 2021. Accessed 10 May 2023.
Hedge & Co. “Toyota, Honda finish 1-2; General Motors finishes at 3rd in annual Supplier Working Relations Study.” PR Newswire, 23 May 2022. Accessed 17 May 2023.
Henke Jr, John W., and T. Thomas. "Lost supplier trust, lost profits." Supply Chain Management Review, May 2014. Accessed 17 May 2023.
Information Services Group, Inc. “Global Demand for IT and Business Services Continues Upward Surge in Q2, ISG Index™ Finds.” BusinessWire, 7 July 2021. Accessed 8 May 2023.
Kasanoff, Bruce. “New Study Reveals Costs Of Bad Supplier Relationships.” Forbes, 6 Aug 2014. Accessed 17 May 2023.
Macrotrends. “Nissan Motor Gross Profit 2010-2022.” Macrotrends. Accessed 18 May 2023.
Macrotrends. “Toyota Gross Profit 2010-2022.” Macrotrends. Accessed 18 May 2023.
McKinsey. “Mind the [skills] gap.” McKinsey, 27 Jan 2021. Accessed 18 May 2023.
Morgan, Blake. “7 Examples of How Digital Transformation Impacted Business Performance.” Forbes, 21 Jul 2019. Accessed 10 May 2023.
Nissan Motor Corporation. “Nissan reports strong financial results for fiscal year 2022.” Nissan Global Newsroom, 11 May 2023. Accessed 18 May 2023.

Bibliography

“OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership.” Open AI, 23 Jan 2023. Accessed 26 May 2023.
Pearson, Bryan. “The Apple Of Its Aisles: How Best Buy Lured One Of The Biggest Brands.“ Forbes, 23 Apr 2015. Accessed 23 May 2023.
Perifanis, Nikolaos-Alexandros and Fotis Kitsios. “Investigating the Influence of Artificial Intelligence on Business Value in the Digital Era of Strategy: A Literature Review.” Information, 2 Feb 2023. Accessed 10 May 2023.
Scott, Tim and Nathan Spitse. “Third-party risk is becoming a first priority challenge.” Deloitte. Accessed 18 May 2023.
Stanley, Renee. Interview by Kim Osborne Rodriguez, 17 May 2023.
Statista. “Toyota's retail vehicle sales from 2017 to 2021.” Statista, 27 Jul 2022. Accessed 18 May 2023.
Tlili, Ahmed, et al. “What if the devil is my guardian angel: ChatGPT as a case study of using chatbots in education.” Smart Learning Environments, 22 Feb 2023. Accessed 9 May 2023.
Vitasek, Kate. “Outcome-Based Management: What It Is, Why It Matters And How To Make It Happen.” Forbes, 12 Jan 2023. Accessed 9 May 2023.

Drive Business Value With Off-the-Shelf AI

A practical guide to ensure return on your Off-the-Shelf AI investment

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

To guarantee the success of your Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers value, you must start with a clear definition of the business case and an understanding of your data.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Getting value out of AI and machine learning investments

AI vs. ML

Types of Off-the-Shelf AI products and solutions

The data inputs for these models are defined, the developer has to conform to the provided schema, and the data outputs are usually fixed due to the particular task the OTS model is built to solve.

Insight summary

Overarching insight:

To guarantee the success of your Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers value, you must start with a clear definition of the business case and an understanding of your data.

Business Goals

Question the value that AI adds to the tool you are evaluating. Don’t go after the tool simply because it has an AI label attached to it. AI/ML capabilities might add little value but increase implementation complexity. Define the problem you are solving and document business requirements for the tool or a model.

Data

Know your data. Determine data requirements to:

• Train the model during the implementation and development.
• Run the model in production.

People/Skills

Define the skills required for the implementation and assemble the team that will support the project from requirements to deployment and support, through its entire lifecycle. Don’t forget about production support and maintenance.

Choosing an AI-Powered Tool

No need to reinvent the wheel and build a product you can buy, but be prepared to work around tool limitations, and make sure you understand the data and the model the tool is built on.

Choosing an AI/ML Model

Using Off-the-Shelf-AI models enables an agile approach to system development. Faster POC and validation of ideas and approaches, but the model might not be customizable for your requirements.

Guaranteeing Off-the-Shelf AI Implementation Success

Info-Tech Insight

To guarantee the success of your Off-the-Shelf AI implementation and ensure it delivers value, you must start with a clear definition of the business case and an understanding of your data.

Why do you need AI in your toolset? Business Goals Clearly defined problem statement and business requirements for the tool or a model will help you select the right solution that will deliver business value even if it does not have all the latest bells and whistles. Artificial Intelligence Data Strategy

Do you know the data required for implementation? Data Expected business outcome defines data requirements for implementation. Do you have the right data required to train and run the model? Data Governance Machine Bias

Is your organization ready for AI? People/Team/ Skills New skills and expertise are required through all phases of the implementation: design, build, deployment, support, and maintenance, as well as post-production support, scaling, and adoption. Data Architecture/ Infrastructure New tool or model will impact your cloud and integration strategy. It will have to integrate with the existing infrastructure, in the cloud or on prem. Create an Architecture for AI

What questions do you need to ask when choosing the solution? Product/ Tool or Model Selection Do you know what model powers the AI tool? What data was used to train the tool and what data is required to run it? Ask the right questions. Rapid Application Selection Framework SoftwareReviews

Are you measuring impact on your processes? Business and IT Processes Business processes need to be defined or updated to incorporate the output of the tool back into the business processes to deliver value. IT governance and support processes need to accommodate the new AI-powered tool.

Realize and measure business value of your AI investment Value Do you have a clear understanding of the value that AI will bring to your organization?Optimization?Increased revenue?Operational efficiency?

Introduction of Off-the-Shelf AI Requires a Strategic Approach

Define Business Goals and Objectives

Why do you need AI in your toolset? What value will AI deliver? Have a clear understanding of business benefits and the value AI delivers through the tool. Define a business problem that can be solved with either an AI-powered tool or AI/ML pre-built model. Define expectations and assumptions around the value that AI can bring. Document business requirements for a tool or model. Start with the POC or a prototype to test assumptions, architecture, and components of the solution. Define business metrics and KPIs to measure success of the implementation. Info-Tech Insight Question the value that AI adds to the tool you are evaluating. Don’t go after the tool simply because it has an AI label attached to it. AI/ML capabilities might add little value but increase implementation complexity. Define the problem you are solving and document business requirements for the tool or a model.

AAI solutions and technologies are helping organizations make faster decisions and predict future outcomes such as: Business process automation Intelligent integration Intelligent insights Operational efficiency improvement Increase revenue Improvement of existing products and services Product and process innovation

1. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool to define business drivers and document business requirements

		Use the Business Drivers tab to document: Business objectives of the initiative that might drive the AI/ML use case. The business owner or primary stakeholder who will help to define business value and requirements. All stakeholders who will be involved or impacted. KPIs that will be used to assess the success of the POC. Data required for the implementation.
Use the Business Requirements tab to document high-level requirements for a tool or model. These requirements will be used while defining criteria for a tool selection and to validate if the tool or model meets your business goals. You can use either traditional BRD format or a user story to document requirements.

Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

1. Define business drivers and document business requirements

2. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool to document data requirements

2-3 hours

Use the Data tab to document the following for each data source or dataset: Data Domain – e.g. Customer data Data Concept – e.g. Customer Data Internally Accessible – Identify datasets that are required for the implementation even if the data might not be available internally. Work on determining if the data ca be acquired externally or collected internally. Source System – define the primary source system for the data, e.g. Salesforce Target System (if applicable) – Define if the data needs to be migrated/transferred. For example, you might use a datalake or data warehouse for the AI/ML solution or migrate data to the cloud. Classification/Taxonomy/Ontology Data Steward Data Owner Data Quality – Data quality indicator Refresh Rate – Frequency of data refresh. Indicate if the data can be accessed in real time or near-real time

Retention – Retention policy requirements Compliance Requirements – Define if data has to comply with any of the regulatory requirements, e.g. GDPR Privacy, Bias, and Ethics Considerations – Privacy Act, PIPEDA, etc. Identify if the dataset contains sensitive information that should be excluded from the model, such as gender, age, race etc. Indicate fairness metrics, if applicable. Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

2. Document data requirements

Is Your Organization Ready for AI?

Assess organizational readiness and define stakeholders impacted by the implementation. Build the team with the right skillset to drive the solution.

Info-Tech Insight:

Define the skills required for the implementation and assemble the team that will support the project through its entire lifecycle. Don’t forget about production, support, and maintenance.

3. Build your implementation team

1-2 hours

Input: Solution conceptual design, Current resource availability

Output: Roles required for the implementation of the solution, Resources gap analysis, Training and hiring plan

Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “People and Team” tab

Participants: Project lead, HR, Enterprise Architect

1. Review your solution conceptual design and define implementation team roles.
2. Document requirements for each role.
3. Review current org chart and job descriptions and identify skillset gaps. Draft an action plan to fill in the roles.
4. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's People and Team tab to document team roles for the entire implementation, including design, build/implement, deployment, support and maintenance, and future development.

Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

Cloud, SaaS or On Prem – what are my options and what is the impact?

Depending on the architecture of the solution, define the impact on the current infrastructure, including system integration, AI/ML pipeline deployment, maintenance, and data storage

• Data Architecture: use the current data architecture to design the architecture for an AI-powered solution. Assess changes to the data architecture with the introduction of a new tool to make sure it is scalable enough to support the change.
• Define infrastructure requirements for either Cloud, Software-as-a-Service, or on-prem deployment of a tool or model.
• Define how the tool will be integrated with existing systems and into existing infrastructure.
• Define requirements for:
  • Data migration and data storage
  • Security
  • AI/ML pipeline deployment, production monitoring, and maintenance
• Define requirements for operation and maintenance of the tool or model.
• Work with your infrastructure architect and vendor to determine the cost of deploying and running the tool/model.
• Make a decision on the preferred architecture of the system and confirm infrastructure readiness.

Download the Create an Architecture for AI blueprint

4. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool to document infrastructure decisions

2-3 hours

Input: Solution conceptual design

Output: Infrastructure requirements, Infrastructure readiness assessment

Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “Infrastructure” tab

Participants: Infrastructure Architect, Solution Architect, Enterprise Architect, Data Architect, ML/AI Ops Engineer

1. Work with Infrastructure, Data, Solution, and Enterprise Architects to define your conceptual solution architecture.
2. Define integration and storage requirements.
3. Document security requirements for the solution in general and the data specifically.
4. Define MLOps requirements and tools required for ML/AI pipeline deployment and production monitoring.
5. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Infrastructure tab to document requirements and decisions around Data and Infrastructure Architecture.

Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

What questions do you need to ask vendors when choosing the solution?

Take advantage of Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework (RASF) to guide tool selection, but ask vendors the right questions to understand implications of having AI/ML built into the tool or a model

Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “Vendor Questionnaire” tab to track vendor responses to these questions.

Are you measuring impact on your processes?

Make sure that you understand the impact of the new technology on the existing business and IT processes.

And make sure your business processes are ready to take advantage of the benefits and new capabilities enabled by AI/ML.

Process automation, optimization, and improvement enabled by the technology and AI/ML-powered tools allow organizations to reduce manual work, streamline existing business processes, improve customer satisfaction, and get critical insights to assist decision making.

To take full advantage of the benefits and new capabilities enabled by the technology, make sure that business and IT processes reflect these changes:

• Processes that need to be updated.
• How the outcome of the tool or a model (e.g. predictions) is incorporated into the existing business processes and the processes that will monitor the accuracy of the outcome and monitor performance of the tool or model.
• New business and IT processes that need to be defined for the tool (e.g. chatbot maintenance, analysis of the data generated by the tool, etc.).

5. Document the Impact on Business and IT Processes

2-3 hours

Input: Solution design, Existing business and IT processes

Output: Documented updates to the existing processes, Documented new business and IT processes

Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool, “Business and IT Processes” tab

Participants: Project lead, Business stakeholders, Business analyst

1. Review current business processes affected by the implementation of the AI/ML- powered tool or model. Define the changes that need to be made. The changes might include simplification of the process due to automation of some of the steps. Some processes will need to be redesigned and some processes might become obsolete.
2. Document high-level steps for any new processes that need to be defined around the AI/ML-powered tool. An example of such a process would be defining new IT and business processes to support a new chatbot.
3. Use Info-Tech’s Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool's Business and IT Processes tab, to document process changes.

Download the Off-the-Shelf AI Analysis Tool

AI-powered Tools – Considerations

Pre-built/pre-trained models – what to keep in mind when choosing

Info-Tech Insight:

Using Off-the-Shelf AI models enables an agile approach to system development – faster POC and validation of ideas and approaches, but the model might not be customizable for your requirements.

Metrics

Metrics and KPIs for this project will depend on the business goals and objectives that you will identify in Step 1 of the tool selection process.

Metrics might include:

• Reduction of time spent on a specific business process. If the tool is used to automate certain steps of a business process, this metric will measure how much time was saved, in minutes/hours, compared to the process time before the introduction of the tool.
• Accuracy of prediction. This metric would measure the accuracy of estimations or predictions compared to the same estimations done before the implementation of the tool. It can be measured by generating the same prediction or estimation using the AI-powered tool or using any methods used before the introduction of the tool and comparing the results.
• Accuracy of the search results. If the AI-powered tool is a search engine, compare a) how much time it would take a user to find an article or a piece of content they were searching for using new tool vs. previous techniques, b) how many steps it took the user to locate the required article in the search results, and c) the location of the correct piece of content in the search result list (at the top of the search result list or on the tenth page).
• Time spent on manual tasks and activities. This metric will measure how much time, in minutes/hours, is spent by the employees or users on manual tasks if the tool automates some of these tasks.
• Reduction of business process steps (if the steps are being automated). To derive this metric, create a map of the business process before the introduction of the AI-powered tool and after, and determine if the tool helped to simplify the process by reducing the number of process steps.

Bibliography

Adryan, Boris. “Is it all machine learning?” Badryan, Oct. 20, 2015. Accessed Feb. 2022.

“AI-Powered Data Management Platform.” Informatica, N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

Amazon Rekognition. “Automate your image and video analysis with machine learning.” AWS. N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

“Artificial Intelligence (AI).” IBM Cloud Education, 3 June 2020. Accessed Feb 2022.

“Artificial intelligence (AI) vs machine learning (ML).” Microsoft Azure Documentation. Accessed Feb. 2022.

“Avante Garde in the Realm of AI” SearchUnify Cognitive Platform. Accessed Feb 2022.

“Azure Cognitive Services.” Microsoft. N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

“Becoming an AI-fueled organization. State of AI in the enterprise, 4th edition,” Deloitte, 2020. Accessed Feb. 2022.

“Coveo Predictive Search.” Coveo, N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

”Data and AI Leadership. Executive Survey 2022. Executive Summary of Findings.” NewVantage Partners. Accessed Feb 2022.

“Einstein Discovery in Tableau.” Tableau, N.d. Accessed Feb 2022.

Korolov, Maria. “9 biggest hurdles to AI adoption.” CIO, Feb 26, 2019. Accessed Feb 2022.

Meel, Vidushi. “What Is Deep Learning? An Easy to Understand Guide.” visio.ai. Accessed Feb. 2022.

Mitchell, Tom. “Machine Learning,” McGraw Hill, 1997.

Stewart, Matthew. “The Actual Difference Between Statistics and Machine Learning.” Towards Data Science, Mar 24, 2019. Accessed Feb 2022.

“Sentiment analysis with Cognitive Services.” Microsoft Azure Documentation. Accessed February 2022.

“Three Principles for Designing ML-Powered Products.” Spotify Blog. Oct 2019, Accessed Feb 2022.

“Video Intelligence API.” Google Cloud Platform. N.d. Accessed Feb 2022

Network Segmentation

Protect your network by controlling the conversations within it.

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

The aim of networking is communication, but unfettered communication can be a liability. Appropriate segmentation in networks, blocking communications where they are not required or desired, restricts lateral movement within the network, allowing for better risk mitigation and management.

Network segmentation

How do you execute on network segmentation?

Identify risks by understanding access across the network

Understand the network space

Info-Tech Insight

The more granular you are in the definition of the network space, the more granular you can be in your segmentation. The unfortunate corollary to this is that the difficulty of managing your end solution grows with the granularity of your segmentation.

Create appropriate policy

Prioritize the potential segmentation

Info-Tech Insight

Be sure to keep this exercise relative so that a clear ranking occurs. If it turns out that everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. When ranking things relative to others in the exercise, we ensure clear “winners” and “losers.”

Assess risk and prioritize action

1-3 hours

1. Define a list of users and services that define the network space to be addressed. If the lists are too long, use an exercise like affinity diagramming to appropriately group them into a smaller subset.
2. Create a matrix from the lists (put users and services along the rows and columns). In the intersecting points, label how the traffic should be treated (e.g. Permissive, Restricted, Rejected).
3. Examine the matrix and assess the intersections for risk using the lens of impact and likelihood of an adverse event. Label the intersections for risk level with one of green (low impact/likelihood), yellow (medium impact/likelihood), or red (high impact/likelihood).
4. Find commonalities within the medium/high areas and list the users or services as priorities to be addressed.

Design segmentation

Segmentation comes in many flavors; decide which is right for the specific circumstance.

Decide on which methods work for your circumstances

You always have options…

There are multiple lenses to look through when making the decision of what the correct segmentation method might be for any given user group or service. A potential subset could include:

• Effort to deploy
• Cost of the solution
• Skills required to operate
• Granularity of the segmentation
• Adaptability of the solution
• Level of automation in the solution

Info-Tech Insight

Network segmentation within an organization is rarely a one-size-fits-all proposition. Be sure to look at each situation that has been identified to need segmentation and align it with an appropriate solution. The overall number of solutions deployed has to maintain a balance between that appropriateness and the effort to manage multiple environments.

Framework to examine segmentation methods

To assess we need to understand.

To assess when technologies or methodologies are appropriate for a segmentation use case, we need to understand what those options are. We will be examining potential segmentation methods and concepts within the following framework:

WHAT

A description of the segmentation technology, method, or concept.

WHY

Why would this be used over other choices and/or in what circumstances?

HOW

A high-level overview of how this option could or would be deployed.

Notional assessments will be displayed in a sidebar to give an idea of Effort, Cost, Skills, Granularity, Adaptability, and Automation.

Air gap

… And never the twain shall meet.

– Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West.”

WHAT

Air gapping is a strategy to protect portions of a network by segmenting those portions and running them on completely separate hardware from the primary network. In an air gap scenario, the segmented network cannot have connectivity to outside networks. This difference makes air gapping a very specific implementation of parallel networks (which are still segmented and run on separate hardware but can be connected through a control point).

WHY

Air gap is a traditional choice when environments need to be very secure. Examples where air gaps exist(ed) are:

• Operational technology (OT) networks
• Military networks
• Critical infrastructure

HOW

Most networks are not overprovisioned to a level that physical segmentation can be done without purchasing new equipment. The major steps required for constructing an air gap include:

• Design segmentation
• Purchase and install new hardware
• Cable to new hardware

Info-Tech Insight

An air gapped network is the ultimate in segmentation and security … as long as the network does not require connectivity. It is unfortunately rare in today’s world that a network will stand on its own without any need for external connectivity.

VLAN

Do what you can, with what you’ve got…

– Theodore Roosevelt

WHAT

Virtual local area networks (VLANs) are a standard feature on today’s firewalls, routers, and manageable switches. This configuration option allows for network traffic to be segmented into separate virtual networks (broadcast domains) on existing hardware. This segmentation is done at layer 2 of the OSI model. All traffic will share the same hardware but be partitioned based on “tags” that the local device applies to the traffic. Because of these tags, traffic is handled separately at layer 2 of the OSI model, but traffic can pass between segments at layer 3 (e.g. IP layer).

WHY

VLANs are commonly used because most existing deployments already have the technology available without extra licensing. VLANs are also potentially used as foundational components in more complex segmentation strategies such as static or dynamic overlays.

HOW

VLANs allow for segmentation of a device at the port level. VLAN strategies are generally on a location level (e.g. most VLAN deployments are local to a site, though the same structure may be used among sites). To deploy VLANs you must:

• Define VLAN segments
• Assign ports appropriately

Info-Tech Insight

VLANs are tried and true segmentation workhorses. The fact that they are already included in modern manageable solutions means that there is very little reason to not have some level of segmentation within a network.

Micro-segmentation

Everyone is against micromanaging, but macro managing means you’re working on the big picture but don’t understand the details.

– Henry Mintzberg

WHAT

Micro-segmentation is used to secure and control network traffic between workloads. This is a foundational technology when implementing zero trust or least-privileged access network designs. Segmentation is done at or directly adjacent to the workload (on the system or its direct network connectivity) through firewall or similar policy controls. The controls are set to only allow the network communication required to execute the workload and is limited to appropriate endpoints. This restrictive design restricts all traffic (including east-west) and reduces the attack surface.

WHY

Micro-segmentation is primarily used:

• In server-to-server communication.
• When lateral movement by bad actors is identified as a concern.

HOW

Micro-segmentation can be deployed at different places within the connectivity depending on the technologies used:

• Workload/server (e.g. server firewall)
• VM network overlay (e.g. VMware NSX)
• Network port (e.g. ACL, firewall, ACI)
• Cloud native (e.g. Azure Firewall)

Info-Tech Insight

Micro-segmentation is necessary in the data center to limit lateral movement. Just be sure to be thorough in defining required communication as this technology works on allowlists, not traditional blocklists.

Static overlay

Adaptability is key.

– Marc Andreessen

WHAT

Static overlays are a form of virtual segmentation that allows multiple network segments to exist on the same device. Most of these solutions will also allow for these segments to expand across multiple devices or sites, creating overlay virtual networks on top of the existing physical networks. The static nature of the solution is because the ports that participate in the overlays are statically assigned and configured. Connectivity between devices and sites is done through encapsulation and may have a dynamic component of the control plane handled through routing protocols.

WHY

Static overlays are commonly deployed when the need is to segment different use cases or areas of the organization consistently across sites while allowing easy access within the segments between sites. This could be representative of segmenting a department like Finance or extending a layer 2 segment across data centers.

HOW

Static overlays are can segment and potentially extend a layer 2 or layer 3 network. These solutions could be executed with technologies such as:

• VXLAN (Virtual eXtensible LAN)
• MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching)
• VRF (Virtual Routing & Forwarding)

Info-Tech Insight

Static overlays are commonly deployed by telecommunications providers when building out their service offerings due to the multitenancy requirements of the network.

Dynamic overlay

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

– George S. Patton

WHAT

A dynamic overlay segmentation solution has the ability to make security or traffic decisions based on policy. Rather than designing and hardcoding the network architecture, the policy is architected and the network makes decisions based on that policy. Differing levels of control exist in this space, but the underlying commonality is that the segmentation would be considered “software defined” (SDN).

WHY

Dynamic overlay solutions provide the most flexibility of the presented solutions. Some use cases such as BYOD or IoT devices may not be easily identified or controlled through static means. As a general rule of thumb, the less static the network is, the more dynamic your segmentation solution must be.

HOW

Policy is generally applied at the network ingress. When applying policy, which policy to be applied can be identified through different methodologies such as:

• Authentication (e.g. 802.1x)
• Device agents
• Device profiling

Info-Tech Insight

Dynamic overlays allow for more flexibility through its policy-based configurations. These solutions can provide the highest value when positioned where we have less control of the points within a network (e.g. BYOD scenarios).

Define how your segments will communicate

No segment is an island…

Network segmentation allows for protection of devices, users, or data through the act of separating the physical or virtual networks they are on. Counter to this protective stance, especially in today’s networks, these devices, users, or data tend to need to interact with each other outside of the neat lines we draw for them. Proper network segmentation has to allow for the transfer of assets between networks in a safe and secure manner.

Info-Tech Insight

The solutions used to facilitate the controlled communication between segments has to consider the friction to the users. If too much friction is introduced, people will try to find a way around the controls, potentially negating the security that is intended with the solution.

Potential access methods

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

– John A. Shedd

Operate and optimize

Security is not static. Monitor and iterate on policies within the environment.

Monitor for efficacy, compliance, and the unknown

Monitor to ensure your intended results and to identify new potential risks.

Monitoring network segments

A combination of passive and active monitoring is required to ensure that:

• The rules that have been deployed are working as expected.
• Appropriate proof of compliance is in place for auditing and insurance purposes.
• Environments are being monitored for unexpected traffic.

Active monitoring goes beyond the traditional gathering of information for alerts and dashboards and moves into the space of synthetic users and anomaly detection. Using these strategies helps to ensure that security is enforced appropriately and responses to issues are timely.

"We discovered in our research that insider threats are not viewed as seriously as external threats, like a cyberattack. But when companies had an insider threat, in general, they were much more costly than external incidents. This was largely because the insider that is smart has the skills to hide the crime, for months, for years, sometimes forever."

– Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman Ponemon Institute, at SecureWorld Boston

Info-Tech Insight

Using solutions like network detection and response (NDR) will allow for monitoring to take advantage of advanced analytical techniques like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). These technologies can help identify anomalies that a human might miss.

Monitoring options

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

– Henry David Thoreau

Gather feedback, assess the situation, and iterate

Take input from operating the environment and use that to optimize the process and the outcome.

Optimize through iteration

Output from monitoring must be fed back into the process of maintaining and optimizing segmentation. Network segmentation should be viewed as an ongoing process as opposed to a singular structured project.

Monitoring can and will highlight where and when the segmentation design is successful and when new traffic flows arise. If these inputs are not fed back through the process, designs will become stagnant and admins or users will attempt to find ways to circumvent solutions for ease of use.

"I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself."

– Elon Musk, qtd. in Mashable, 2012

Info-Tech Insight

The network environment will not stay static; flows will change as often as required for the business to succeed. Take insights from monitoring the environment and integrate them into an iterative process that will maintain relevance and usability in your segmentation.

Bibliography

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“Dynamic Network Segmentation: A Must-Have for Digital Businesses in the Age of Zero Trust.” Forescout Whitepaper, 2021. Accessed Nov. 2022.
Eaves, Johnothan. “Segmentation Strategy - An ISE Prescriptive Guide.” Cisco Community,
26 Oct. 2020. Accessed Nov. 2022.
Kambic, Dan, and Jason Fricke. “Network Segmentation: Concepts and Practices.” Carnegie Mellon University SEI Blog, 19 Oct. 2020. Accessed Nov. 2022.
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Patton, George S. “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” BrainyQuote, n.d.
Ponemon, Larry. “We discovered in our research […].” SecureWorld Boston, n.d.
Roosevelt, Theodore. “Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt Center, n.d.
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Singleton, Camille, et al. “X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2022” IBM, 17 Feb. 2022.
Accessed Nov. 2022.
Stone, Mark. “What is network segmentation? NS best practices, requirements explained.” AT&T Cyber Security, March 2021. Accessed Nov. 2022.
“The State of Breach and Attack Simulation and the Need for Continuous Security Validation: A Study of US and UK Organizations.” Ponemon Institute, Nov. 2020. Accessed Nov. 2022.
Thoreau, Henry David. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” BrainyQuote, n.d.
Ulanoff, Lance. “Elon Musk: Secrets of a Highly Effective Entrepreneur.” Mashable, 13 April 2012.
“What Is Microsegmenation?” Palo Alto, Accessed Nov. 2022.
“What is Network Segmentation? Introduction to Network Segmentation.” Sunny Valley Networks, n.d.

Establish Data Governance

Deliver measurable business value.

Executive Brief

Analyst Perspective

Establish a data governance program that brings value to your organization.

Data governance does not sit as an island on its own in the organization – it must align with and be driven by your enterprise governance. As you build out data governance in your organization, it’s important to keep in mind that this program is meant to be an enabling framework of oversight and accountabilities for managing, handling, and protecting your company’s data assets. It should never be perceived as bureaucratic or inhibiting to your data users. It should deliver agreed-upon models that are conducive to your organization’s operating culture, offering clarity on who can do what with the data and via what means. Data governance is the key enabler for bringing high-quality, trusted, secure, and discoverable data to the right users across your organization. Promote and drive the responsible and ethical use of data while helping to build and foster an organizational culture of data excellence.

Crystal Singh

Director, Research & Advisory, Data & Analytics Practice

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

The amount of data within organizations is growing at an exponential rate, creating a need to adopt a formal approach to governing data. However, many organizations remain uninformed on how to effectively govern their data. Comprehensive data governance should define leadership, accountability, and responsibility related to data use and handling and be supported by a well-oiled operating model and relevant policies and procedures. This will help ensure the right data gets to the right people at the right time, using the right mechanisms.

Common Obstacles

Organizations are faced with challenges associated with changing data landscapes, evolving business models, industry disruptions, regulatory and compliance obligations, and changing and maturing user landscape and demand for data. Although the need for a data governance program is often evident, organizations miss the mark when their data governance efforts are not directly aligned to delivering measurable business value. Initiatives should support key strategic initiatives, as well as value streams and their underlying business capabilities.

Info-Tech’s Approach

Info-Tech’s approach to establishing and sustaining effective data governance is anchored in the strong alignment of organizational value streams and their business capabilities with key data governance dimensions and initiatives. Organizations should:

• Align their data governance with enterprise governance, business strategy and value streams to ensure the program delivers measurable business value.
• Understand their current data governance capabilities so as to build out a future state that is right-sized and relevant.
• Define data leadership, accountability, and responsibility. Support these with an operating model that effectively manages change and communication and fosters a culture of data excellence.

Info-Tech Insight

Your organization’s value streams and the associated business capabilities require effectively governed data. Without this, you face elevated operating costs, missed opportunities, eroded stakeholder satisfaction, and increased business risk.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations build and sustain an effective data governance program.

• Your organization has recognized the need to treat data as a corporate asset for generating business value and/or managing and mitigating risk.
• This has brought data governance to the forefront and highlighted the need to build a performance-driven enterprise program for delivering quality, trusted, and readily consumable data to users.
• An effective data governance program is one that defines leadership, accountability, and responsibility related to data use and handling. It’s supported by a well-oiled operating model and relevant policies and procedures, all of which help build and foster a culture of data excellence where the right users get access to the right data at the right time via the right mechanisms.

As you embark on establishing data governance in your organization, it’s vital to ensure from the get-go that you define the drivers and business context for the program. Data governance should never be attempted without direction on how the program will yield measurable business value.

“Data processing and cleanup can consume more than half of an analytics team’s time, including that of highly paid data scientists, which limits scalability and frustrates employees.” – Petzold, et al., 2020

“The productivity of employees across the organization can suffer.” – Petzold, et al., 2020

Respondents to McKinsey’s 2019 Global Data Transformation Survey reported that an average of 30% of their total enterprise time was spent on non-value-added tasks because of poor data quality and availability. – Petzold, et al., 2020

Common obstacles

Some of the barriers that make data governance difficult to address for many organizations include:

• Gaps in communicating the strategic value of data and data governance to the organization. This is vital for securing senior leadership buy-in and support, which, in turn, is crucial for sustained success of the data governance program.
• Misinterpretation or a lack of understanding about data governance, including what it means for the organization and the individual data user.
• A perception that data governance is inhibiting or an added layer of bureaucracy or complication rather than an enabling and empowering framework for stakeholders in their use and handling of data.
• Embarking on data governance without firmly substantiating and understanding the organizational drivers for doing so. How is data governance going to support the organization’s value streams and their various business capabilities?
• Neglecting to define and measure success and performance. Just as in any other enterprise initiative, you have to be able to demonstrate an ROI for time, resources and funding. These metrics must demonstrate the measurable business value that data governance brings to the organization.
• Failure to align data governance with enterprise governance.

78% of companies (and 92% of top-tier companies) have a corporate initiative to become more data-driven. – Alation, 2020

But despite these ambitions, there appears to be a “data culture disconnect” – 58% of leaders overestimate the current data culture of their enterprises, giving a grade higher than the one produced by the study. – Fregoni, 2020

The strategic value of data

Power intelligent and transformative organizational performance through leveraging data.

Respond to industry disruptors

Optimize the way you serve your stakeholders and customers

Develop products and services to meet ever-evolving needs

Manage operations and mitigate risk

Harness the value of your data

The journey to being data-driven

The journey to declaring that you are a data-driven organization requires a pit stop at data enablement.

The Data Economy

Data Disengaged

You have a low appetite for data and rarely use data for decision making.

Data Enabled

Technology, data architecture, and people and processes are optimized and supported by data governance.

Data Driven

You are differentiating and competing on data and analytics; described as a “data first” organization. You’re collaborating through data. Data is an asset.

Data governance is essential for any organization that makes decisions about how it uses its data.

Data governance is an enabling framework of decision rights, responsibilities, and accountabilities for data assets across the enterprise.

Data governance is:

• Executed according to agreed-upon models that describe who can take what actions with what information, when, and using what methods (Olavsrud, 2021).
• True business-IT collaboration that will lead to increased consistency and confidence in data to support decision making. This, in turn, helps fuel innovation and growth.

If done correctly, data governance is not:

• An annoying, finger-waving roadblock in the way of getting things done.
• Meant to solve all data-related business or IT problems in an organization.
• An inhibitor or impediment to using and sharing data.

Info-Tech’s Data Governance Framework

Create impactful data governance by embedding it within enterprise governance

Organizational drivers for data governance

Data governance personas:

Conformance: Establishing data governance to meet regulations and compliance requirements.

Performance: Establishing data governance to fuel data-driven decision making for driving business value and managing and mitigating business risk.

Data Governance is not a one-person show

• Data governance needs a leader and a home. Define who is going to be leading, driving, and steering data governance in your organization.
• Senior executive leaders play a crucial role in championing and bringing visibility to the value of data and data governance. This is vital for building and fostering a culture of data excellence.
• Effective data governance comes with business and IT alignment, collaboration, and formally defined roles around data leadership, ownership, and stewardship.

Traditional data governance organizational structure

A traditional structure includes committees and roles that span across strategic, tactical, and operational duties. There is no one-size-fits-all data governance structure. However, most organizations follow a similar pattern when establishing committees, councils, and cross-functional groups. Most organizations strive to identify roles and responsibilities at a strategic and operational level. Several factors will influence the structure of the program, such as the focus of the data governance project and the maturity and size of the organization.

A healthy data culture is key to amplifying the power of your data.

“Albert Einstein is said to have remarked, ‘The world cannot be changed without changing our thinking.’ What is clear is that the greatest barrier to data success today is business culture, not lagging technology. “– Randy Bean, 2020

What does it look like?

• Everybody knows the data.
• Everybody trusts the data.
• Everybody talks about the data.

“It is not enough for companies to embrace modern data architectures, agile methodologies, and integrated business-data teams, or to establish centers of excellence to accelerate data initiatives, when only about 1 in 4 executives reported that their organization has successfully forged a data culture.”– Randy Bean, 2020

Data literacy is an essential part of a data-driven culture

• In a data-driven culture, decisions are made based on data evidence, not on gut instinct.
• Data often has untapped potential. A data-driven culture builds tools and skills, builds users’ trust in the condition and sources of data, and raises the data skills and understanding among their people on the front lines.
• Building a data culture takes an ongoing investment of time, effort, and money. This investment will not achieve the transformation you want without data literacy at the grassroots level.

Data-driven culture = “data matters to our company”

Despite investments in data initiative, organizations are carrying high levels of data debt

Data debt is “the accumulated cost that is associated with the sub-optimal governance of data assets in an enterprise, like technical debt.”

Data debt is a problem for 78% of organizations.

40% of organizations say individuals within the business do not trust data insights.

66% of organizations say a backlog of data debt is impacting new data management initiatives.

33% of organizations are not able to get value from a new system or technology investment.

30% of organizations are unable to become data-driven.

Source: Experian, 2020

Absent or sub-optimal data governance leads to data debt

Only 3% of companies’ data meets basic quality standards. (Source: Nagle, et al., 2017)

Organizations suspect 28% of their customer and prospect data is inaccurate in some way. (Source: Experian, 2020)

Only 51% of organizations consider the current state of their CRM or ERP data to be clean, allowing them to fully leverage it. (Source: Experian, 2020)

35% of organizations say they’re not able to see a ROI for data management initiatives. (Source: Experian, 2020)

Embrace the technology

Make the available data governance tools and technology work for you:

• Data catalog
• Business data glossary
• Data lineage
• Metadata management

While data governance tools and technologies are no panacea, leverage their automated and AI-enabled capabilities to augment your data governance program.

Measure success to demonstrate tangible business value

Put data governance into the context of the business:

• Tie the value of data governance and its initiatives back to the business capabilities that are enabled.
• Leverage the KPIs of those business capabilities to demonstrate tangible and measurable value. Use terms and language that will resonate with senior leadership.

Don’t let measurement be an afterthought:

Start substantiating early on how you are going to measure success as your data governance program evolves.

Build a right-sized roadmap

Formulate an actionable roadmap that is right-sized to deliver value in your organization.

Key considerations:

• When building your data governance roadmap, ensure you do so through an enterprise lens. Be cognizant of other initiatives that might be coming down the pipeline that may require you to align your data governance milestones accordingly.
• Apart from doing your planning with consideration for other big projects or launches that might be in-flight and require the time and attention of your data governance partners, also be mindful of the more routine yet still demanding initiatives.
• When doing your roadmapping, consider factors like the organization’s fiscal cycle, typical or potential year-end demands, and monthly/quarterly reporting periods and audits. Initiatives such as these are likely to monopolize the time and focus of personnel key to delivering on your data governance milestones.

Sample milestones:

Data Governance Leadership & Org Structure Definition

Define the home for data governance and other key roles around ownership and stewardship, as approved by senior leadership.

Data Governance Charter and Policies

Create a charter for your program and build/refresh associated policies.

Data Culture Diagnostic

Understand the organization’s current data culture, perception of data, value of data, and knowledge gaps.

Use Case Build and Prioritization

Build a use case that is tied to business capabilities. Prioritize accordingly.

Business Data Glossary

Build and/or refresh the business’ glossary for addressing data definitions and standardization issues.

Tools & Technology

Explore the tools and technology offering in the data governance space that would serve as an enabler to the program. (e.g. RFI, RFP).

Key takeaways for effective business-driven data governance

Data governance leadership and sponsorship is key.

Ensure strategic business alignment.

Build and foster a culture of data excellence.

Evolve along the data journey.

Make data governance an enabler, not a hindrance.

Insight summary

Overarching insight

Your organization’s value streams and the associated business capabilities require effectively governed data. Without this, you face the impact of elevated operational costs, missed opportunities, eroded stakeholder satisfaction, and exposure to increased business risk.

Insight 1

Data governance should not sit as an island in your organization. It must continuously align with the organization’s enterprise governance function. It shouldn’t be perceived as a pet project of IT, but rather as an enterprise-wide, business-driven initiative.

Insight 2

Ensure your data governance program delivers measurable business value by aligning the associated data governance initiatives with the business architecture. Leverage the measures of success or KPIs of the underlying business capabilities to demonstrate the value data governance has yielded for the organization.

Insight 3

Data governance remains the foundation of all forms of reporting and analytics. Advanced capabilities such as AI and machine learning require effectively governed data to fuel their success.

Tactical insight

Tailor your data literacy program to meet your organization’s needs, filling your range of knowledge gaps and catering to your different levels of stakeholders. When it comes to rolling out a data literacy program, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Your data literacy program is intended to fill the knowledge gaps about data, as they exist in your organization. It should be targeted across the board – from your executive leadership and management through to the subject matter experts across different lines of the business in your organization.

Info-Tech’s methodology for establishing data governance

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Data Governance Planning and Roadmapping Workbook

Use the Data Governance Planning and Roadmapping Workbook as you plan, build, roll-out, and scale data governance in your organization.

Data Use Case Framework Template

This template takes you through a business needs gathering activity to highlight and create relevant use cases around the organization’s data-related problems and opportunities.

Business Data Glossary

Use this template to document the key data assets that are to be governed and create a data flow diagram for your organization.

Data Culture Diagnostic and Scorecard

Leverage Info-Tech’s Data Culture Diagnostic to understand how your organization scores across 10 areas relating to data culture.

Key deliverable:

Data Governance Planning and Roadmapping Workbook

Measure the value of this blueprint

Leverage this blueprint’s approach to ensure your data governance initiatives align and support your key value streams and their business capabilities.

• Aligning your data governance program and its initiatives to your organization’s business capabilities is vital for tracing and demonstrating measurable business value for the program.
• This alignment of data governance with value streams and business capabilities enables you to use business-defined KPIs and demonstrate tangible value.

In phases 1 and 2 of this blueprint, we will help you establish the business context, define your business drivers and KPIs, and understand your current data governance capabilities and strengths.

In phase 3, we will help you develop a plan and a roadmap for addressing any gaps and improving the relevant data governance capabilities so that data is well positioned to deliver on those defined business metrics.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team, has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keeps us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Establish Data Governance project overview

Contact your account representative for more information. workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative for more information. workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Phase 1

Build Business and User Context

“When business users are invited to participate in the conversation around data with data users and IT, it adds a fundamental dimension — business context. Without a real understanding of how data ties back to the business, the value of analysis and insights can get lost.” – Jason Lim, Alation

This phase will guide you through the following activities:

• Identify Your Business Capabilities
• Define your Organization’s Key Business Capabilities
• Develop a Strategy Map that Aligns Business Capabilities to Your Strategic Focus

This phase involves the following participants:

• Data Governance Leader/Data Leader (CDO)
• Senior Business Leaders
• Business SMEs
• Data Leadership, Data Owners, Data Stewards and Custodians

Step 1.1

Substantiate Business Drivers

Activities

1.1.1 Identify Your Business Capabilities

1.1.2 Categorize Your Organization’s Key Business Capabilities

1.1.3 Develop a Strategy Map Tied to Data Governance

This step will guide you through the following activities:

• Leverage your organization’s existing business capability map or initiate the formulation of a business capability map, guided by info-Tech’s approach
• Determine which business capabilities are considered high priority by your organization
• Map your organization’s strategic objectives to value streams and capabilities to communicate how objectives are realized with the support of data

Outcomes of this step

• A foundation for data governance initiative planning that’s aligned with the organization’s business architecture: value streams, business capability map, and strategy map

Info-Tech Insight

Gaining a sound understanding of your business architecture (value streams and business capabilities) is a critical foundation for establishing and sustaining a data governance program that delivers measurable business value.

1.1.1 Identify Your Business Capabilities

Confirm your organization's existing business capability map or initiate the formulation of a business capability map:

• If you have an existing business capability map, meet with the relevant business owners/stakeholders to confirm that the content is accurate and up to date. Confirm the value streams (how your organization creates and captures value) and their business capabilities are reflective of the organization’s current business environment.
• If you do not have an existing business capability map, follow this activity to initiate the formulation of a map (value streams and related business capabilities):
  1. Define the organization’s value streams. Meet with senior leadership and other key business stakeholders to define how your organization creates and captures value.
  2. Define the relevant business capabilities. Meet with senior leadership and other key business stakeholders to define the business capabilities.

Note: A business capability defines what a business does to enable value creation. Business capabilities are business terms defined using descriptive nouns such as “Marketing” or “Research and Development.” They represent stable business functions, are unique and independent of each other, and typically will have a defined business outcome.

Input

• List of confirmed value streams and their related business capabilities

Output

• Business capability map with value streams for your organization

Materials

• Your existing business capability map or the template provided in the Data Governance Planning and Roadmapping Workbook accompanying this blueprint

Participants

• Key business stakeholders
• Data stewards
• Data custodians
• Data Governance Working Group

For more information, refer to Info-Tech’s Document Your Business Architecture.

Define or validate the organization’s value streams

Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities. These value realization activities, in turn, depend on data.

If the organization does not have a business architecture function to conduct and guide Activity 1.1.1, you can leverage the following approach:

• Meet with key stakeholders regarding this topic, then discuss and document your findings.
• When trying to identify the right stakeholders, consider: Who are the decision makers and key influencers? Who will impact this piece of business architecture related work? Who has the relevant skills, competencies, experience, and knowledge about the organization?
• Engage with these stakeholders to define and validate how the organization creates value.
• Consider:
  • Who are your main stakeholders? This will depend on the industry in which you operate. For example, customers, residents, citizens, constituents, students, patients.
  • What are your stakeholders looking to accomplish?
  • How does your organization’s products and/or services help them accomplish that?
  • What are the benefits your organization delivers to them and how does your organization deliver those benefits?
  • How do your stakeholders receive those benefits?

Align data governance to the organization's value realization activities.

Value streams enable the organization to create or capture value in the market in which it operates by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.

Info-Tech Insight

Your organization’s value streams and the associated business capabilities require effectively governed data. Without this, you face the possibilities of elevated operational costs, missed opportunities, eroded stakeholder satisfaction, negative impact to reputation and brand, and/or increased exposure to business risk.

Example of value streams – Retail Banking

Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities.

Example value stream descriptions for: Retail Banking

Value streams enable the organization to create or capture value in the market in which it operates by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.

For this value stream, download Info-Tech’s Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Retail Banking.

Example of value streams – Higher Education

Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities.

Example value stream descriptions for: Higher Education

Value streams enable the organization to create or capture value in the market in which it operates by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.

For this value stream, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Higher Education.

Example of value streams – Local Government

Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities.

Example value stream descriptions for: Local Government

Value streams enable the organization to create or capture value in the market in which it operates by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.

For this value stream, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Local Government.

Example of value streams – Manufacturing

Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities.

Example value stream descriptions for: Manufacturing

Value streams enable the organization to create or capture value in the market in which it operates by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.

For this value stream, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Manufacturing.

Example of value streams – Retail

Value streams connect business goals to the organization’s value realization activities.

Example value stream descriptions for: Retail

Value streams enable the organization to create or capture value in the market in which it operates by engaging in a set of interconnected activities.

For this value stream, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Retail.

Define the organization’s business capabilities in a business capability map

A business capability defines what a business does to enable value creation. Business capabilities represent stable business functions and typically will have a defined business outcome.

Business capabilities can be thought of as business terms defined using descriptive nouns such as “Marketing” or “Research and Development.”

If your organization doesn’t already have a business capability map, you can leverage the following approach to build one. This initiative requires a good understanding of the business. By working with the right stakeholders, you can develop a business capability map that speaks a common language and accurately depicts your business.

Working with the stakeholders as described above:

• Analyze the value streams to identify and describe the organization’s capabilities that support them.
• Consider: What is the objective of your value stream? (This can highlight which capabilities support which value stream.)
• As you initiate your engagement with your stakeholders, don’t start a blank page. Leverage the examples on the next slides as a starting point for your business capability map.
• When using these examples, consider: What are the activities that make up your particular business? Keep the ones that apply to your organization, remove the ones that don’t, and add any needed.

Align data governance to the organization's value realization activities.

Info-Tech Insight

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and hence represents a view of what your data governance program must support.

For more information, refer to Info-Tech’s Document Your Business Architecture.

Example business capability map – Retail Banking

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and hence represents a view of what your data governance program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Info-Tech Tip:

Leverage your business capability map verification session with these key stakeholders as a prime opportunity to share and explain the role of data and data governance in supporting the very value realization capabilities under discussion. This will help to build awareness and visibility of the data governance program.

Example business capability map for: Retail Banking

For this business capability map, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Retail Banking.

Example business capability map – Higher Education

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and hence represents a view of what your data governance program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Info-Tech Tip:

Leverage your business capability map verification session with these key stakeholders as a prime opportunity to share and explain the role of data and data governance in supporting the very value realization capabilities under discussion. This will help to build awareness and visibility of the data governance program.

Example business capability map for: Higher Education

For this business capability map, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Higher Education.

Example business capability map – Local Government

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and hence represents a view of what your data governance program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Info-Tech Tip:

Leverage your business capability map verification session with these key stakeholders as a prime opportunity to share and explain the role of data and data governance in supporting the very value realization capabilities under discussion. This will help to build awareness and visibility of the data governance program.

Example business capability map for: Local Government

For this business capability map, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Local Government.

Example business capability map – Manufacturing

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and hence represents a view of what your data governance program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Info-Tech Tip:

Leverage your business capability map verification session with these key stakeholders as a prime opportunity to share and explain the role of data and data governance in supporting the very value realization capabilities under discussion. This will help to build awareness and visibility of the data governance program.

Example business capability map for: Manufacturing

For this business capability map, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Manufacturing.

Example business capability map - Retail

A business capability map can be thought of as a visual representation of your organization’s business capabilities and hence represents a view of what your data governance program must support.

Validate your business capability map with the right stakeholders, including your executive team, business unit leaders, and/or other key stakeholders.

Info-Tech Tip:

Leverage your business capability map verification session with these key stakeholders as a prime opportunity to share and explain the role of data and data governance in supporting the very value realization capabilities under discussion. This will help to build awareness and visibility of the data governance program.

Example business capability map for: Retail

For this business capability map, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Retail.

1.1.2 Categorize Your Organization’s Key Capabilities

Determine which capabilities are considered high priority in your organization.

1. Categorize or heatmap the organization’s key capabilities. Consult with senior and other key business stakeholders to categorize and prioritize the business’ capabilities. This will aid in ensuring your data governance future state planning is aligned with the mandate of the business. One approach to prioritizing capabilities with business stakeholders is to examine them through the lens of cost advantage creators, competitive advantage differentiators, and/or by high value/high risk.
2. Identify cost advantage creators. Focus on capabilities that drive a cost advantage for your organization. Highlight these capabilities and prioritize programs that support them.
3. Identify competitive advantage differentiators. Focus on capabilities that give your organization an edge over rivals or other players in your industry.

This categorization/prioritization exercise helps highlight prime areas of opportunity for building use cases, determining prioritization, and the overall optimization of data and data governance.

Input

• Strategic insight from senior business stakeholders on the business capabilities that drive value for the organization

Output

• Business capabilities categorized and prioritized (e.g. cost advantage creators, competitive advantage differentiators, high value/high risk)

Materials

• Your existing business capability map or the business capability map derived in the previous activity

Participants

• Key business stakeholders
• Data stewards
• Data custodians
• Data Governance Working Group

For more information, refer to Info-Tech’s Document Your Business Architecture.

Example of business capabilities categorization or heatmapping – Retail

This exercise is useful in ensuring the data governance program is focused and aligned to support the priorities and direction of the business.

• Depending on the mandate from the business, priority may be on developing cost advantage. Hence the capabilities that deliver efficiency gains are the ones considered to be cost advantage creators.
• The business’ priority may be on maintaining or gaining a competitive advantage over its industry counterparts. Differentiation might be achieved in delivering unique or enhanced products, services, and/or experiences, and the focus will tend to be on the capabilities that are more end-stakeholder-facing (e.g. customer-, student-, patient,- and/or constituent-facing). These are the organization’s competitive advantage creators.

Example: Retail

For this business capability map, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Retail.

1.1.3 Develop a Strategy Map Tied to Data Governance

Identify the strategic objectives for the business. Knowing the key strategic objectives will drive business-data governance alignment. It’s important to make sure the right strategic objectives of the organization have been identified and are well understood.

1. Meet with senior business leaders and other relevant stakeholders to help identify and document the key strategic objectives for the business.
2. Leverage their knowledge of the organization’s business strategy and strategic priorities to visually represent how these map to value streams, business capabilities, and, ultimately, to data and data governance needs and initiatives. Tip: Your map is one way to visually communicate and link the business strategy to other levels of the organization.
3. Confirm the strategy mapping with other relevant stakeholders.

Guide to creating your map: Starting with strategic objectives, map the value streams that will ultimately drive them. Next, link the key capabilities that enable each value stream. Then map the data and data governance to initiatives that support those capabilities. This is one approach to help you prioritize the data initiatives that deliver the most value to the organization.

Input

• Strategic objectives as outlined by the organization’s business strategy and confirmed by senior leaders

Output

• A strategy map that maps your organizational strategic objectives to value streams, business capabilities, and, ultimately, to data program

Materials

• Your existing business capability map or the one created in the previous step
• The strategy map template provided in the Data Governance Planning and Roadmapping Workbook
• Business strategy

Participants

• Key business stakeholders
• Data stewards
• Data custodians
• Data Governance Working Group

Download Info-Tech’s Data Governance Planning and Roadmapping Workbook

Example of a strategy map tied to data governance

• Strategic objectives are the outcomes that the organization is looking to achieve.
• Value streams enable an organization to create and capture value in the market through interconnected activities that support strategic objectives.
• Business capabilities define what a business does to enable value creation in value streams.
• Data capabilities and initiatives are descriptions of action items on the data and data governance roadmap and which will enable one or multiple business capabilities in its desired target state.

Info-Tech Tip:

Start with the strategic objectives, then map the value streams that will ultimately drive them. Next, link the key capabilities that enable each value stream. Then map the data and data governance initiatives that support those capabilities. This process will help you prioritize the data initiatives that deliver the most value to the organization.

Example: Retail

For this strategy map, download Info-Tech’s Industry Reference Architecture for Retail.

Step 1.2

Build High-Value Use Cases for Data Governance

Activities

1.2.1 Build High-Value Use Cases

This step will guide you through the following activities:

• Leveraging your categorized business capability map to conduct deep-dive sessions with key business stakeholders for creating high-value uses cases
• Discussing current challenges, risks, and opportunities associated with the use of data across the lines of business
• Exploring which other business capabilities, stakeholder groups, and business units will be impacted

Outcomes of this step

• Relevant use cases that articulate the data-related challenges, needs, or opportunities that are clear and contained and, if addressed ,will deliver value to the organization

Info-Tech Tip

One of the most important aspects when building use cases is to ensure you include KPIs or measures of success. You have to be able to demonstrate how the use case ties back to the organizational priorities or delivers measurable business value. Leverage the KPIs and success factors of the business capabilities tied to each particular use case.

1.2.1 Build High-Value Use Cases

This business needs-gathering activity will highlight and create relevant use cases around data-related problems or opportunities that are clear and contained and, if addressed, will deliver value to the organization.

1. Bring together key business stakeholders (data owner, stewards, SMEs) from a particular line of business as well as the relevant data custodian(s) to build cases for their units. Leverage the business capability map you created for facilitating this act.
2. Leverage Info-Tech’s framework for data requirements and methodology for creating use cases, as outlined in the Data Use Case Framework Template and seen on the next slide.
3. Have the stakeholders move through each breakout session outlined in the Use Case Worksheet. Use flip charts or a whiteboard to brainstorm and document their thoughts.
4. Debrief and document results in the Data Use Case Framework Template
5. Repeat this exercise with as many lines of the business as possible, leveraging your business capability map to guide your progress and align with business value.

Tip: Don’t conclude these use case discussions without substantiating what measures of success will be used to demonstrate the business value of the effort to produce the desired future state, as relevant to each particular use case.

Input

• Value streams and business capabilities as defined by business leaders
• Business stakeholders’ subject area expertise
• Data custodian systems, integration, and data knowledge

Output

• Use cases that articulate data-related challenges, needs or opportunities that are tied to defined business capabilities and hence if addressed will deliver measurable value to the organization.

Materials

• Your business capability map from activity 1.1.1
• Info-Tech’s Data Use Case Framework Template
• Whiteboard or flip charts (or shared screen if working remotely)
• Markers/pens

Participants

• Key business stakeholders
• Data stewards and business SMEs
• Data custodians
• Data Governance Working Group

Download Info-Tech’s Data Use Case Framework Template

Info-Tech’s Framework for Building Use Cases

Objective: This business needs-gathering activity will highlight and create relevant use cases around data-related problems or opportunities that are clear and contained and, if addressed, will deliver value to the organization.

Leveraging your business capability map, build use cases that align with the organization’s key business capabilities.

Consider:

• Is the business capability a cost advantage creator or an industry differentiator?
• Is the business capability currently underserved by data?
• Does this need to be addressed? If so, is this risk- or value-driven?

Info-Tech’s Data Requirements and Mapping Methodology for Creating Use Cases

1. What business capability (or capabilities) is this use case tied to for your business area(s)?
2. What are your data-related challenges in performing this today?
3. What are the steps in this process/activity today?
4. What are the applications/systems used at each step today?
5. What data domains are involved, created, used, and/or transformed at each step today?
6. What does an ideal or improved state look like?
7. What other business units, business capabilities, activities, and/or processes will be impacted or improved if this issue was solved?
8. Who are the stakeholders impacted by these changes? Who needs to be consulted?
9. What are the risks to the organization (business capability, revenue, reputation, customer loyalty, etc.) if this is not addressed?
10. What compliance, regulatory, and/or policy concerns do we need to consider in any solution?
11. What measures of success or change should we use to prove the value of the effort (such as KPIs, ROI)? What is the measurable business value of doing this?

The resulting use cases are to be prioritized and leveraged for informing the business case and the data governance capabilities optimization plan.

Taken from Info-Tech’s Data Use Case Framework Template

Phase 2

Understand Your Current Data Governance Capabilities

This phase will guide you through the following activities:

• Understand the Key Components of Data Governance
• Gauge Your Organization’s Current Data Culture

This phase involves the following participants:

• Data Leadership
• Data Ownership & Stewardship
• Policies & Procedures
• Data Literacy & Culture
• Operating Model
• Data Management
• Data Privacy & Security
• Enterprise Projects & Services

Step 2.1

Understand the Key Components of Data Governance

This step will guide you through the following activities:

• Understanding the core components of an effective data governance program and determining your organization’s current capabilities in these areas:
  • Data Leadership
  • Data Ownership & Stewardship
  • Policies & Procedures
  • Data Literacy & Culture
  • Operating Model
  • Data Management
  • Data Privacy & Security
  • Enterprise Projects & Services

Outcomes of this step

• An understanding the core components of an effective data governance program
• An understanding your organization’s current data governance capabilities

Review: Info-Tech’s Data Governance Framework

Key components of data governance

A well-defined data governance program will deliver:

• Defined accountability and responsibility for data.
• Improved knowledge and common understanding of the organization’s data assets.
• Elevated trust and confidence in traceable data.
• Improved data ROI and reduced data debt.
• An enabling framework for supporting the ethical use and handling of data.
• A foundation for building and fostering a data-driven and data-literate organizational culture.

The key components of establishing sustainable enterprise data governance, taken from Info-Tech’s Data Governance Framework:

• Data Leadership
• Data Ownership & Stewardship
• Operating Model
• Policies & Procedures
• Data Literacy & Culture
• Data Management
• Data Privacy & Security
• Enterprise Projects & Services

Data Leadership

• Data governance needs a dedicated head or leader to steer the organization’s data governance program.
• For organizations that do have a chief data officer (CDO), their office is the ideal and effective home for data governance.
• Heads of data governance also have titles such as director of data governance, director of data quality, and director of analytics.
• The head of your data governance program works with all stakeholders and partners to ensure there is continuous enterprise governance alignment and oversight and to drive the program’s direction.
• While key stakeholders from the business and IT will play vital data governance roles, the head of data governance steers the various components, stakeholders, and initiatives, and provides oversight of the overall program.
• Vital data governance roles include: data owners, data stewards, data custodians, data governance steering committee (or your organization’s equivalent), and any data governance working group(s).

The role of the CDO: the voice of data

The office of the chief data officer (CDO):

• Has a cross-organizational vision and strategy for data.
• Owns and drives the data strategy; ensures it supports the overall organizational strategic direction and business goals.
• Leads the organizational data initiatives, including data governance
• Is accountable for the policy, strategy, data standards, and data literacy necessary for the organization to operate effectively.
• Educates users and leaders about what it means to be “data-driven.”
• Builds and fosters a culture of data excellence.

“Compared to most of their C-suite colleagues, the CDO is faced with a unique set of problems. The role is still being defined. The chief data officer is bringing a new dimension and focus to the organization: ‘data.’ ”

– Carruthers and Jackson, 2020

Who does the CDO report to?

• The CDO should be a true C- level executive.
• Where the organization places the CDO role in the structure sends an important signal to the business about how much it values data.

“The title matters. In my opinion, you can’t have a CDO without executive authority. Otherwise no one will listen.”

– Anonymous European CDO

“The reporting structure depends on who’s the ‘glue’ that ties together all these uniquely skilled individuals.”

– John Kemp, Senior Director, Executive Services, Info-Tech Research Group

Data Ownership & Stewardship

Who are best suited to be data owners?

• Wherever they may sit in your organization, data owners will typically have the highest stake in that data.
• Data owners need to be suitably senior and have the necessary decision-making power.
• They have the highest interest in the related business data domain, whether they are the head of a business unit or the head of a line of business that produces data or consumes data (or both).
• If they are neither of these, it’s unlikely they will have the interest in the data (in terms of its quality, protection, ethical use, and handling, for instance) necessary to undertake and adopt the role effectively.

Data owners are typically senior business leaders with the following characteristics:

• Positioned to accept accountability for their data domain.
• Hold authority and influence to affect change, including across business processes and systems, needed to improve data quality, use, handling, integration, etc.
• Have access to a budget and resources for data initiatives such as resolving data quality issues, data cleansing initiatives, business data catalog build, related tools and technology, policy management, etc.
• Hold the influence needed to drive change in behavior and culture.
• Act as ambassadors of data and its value as an organizational strategic asset.

Right-size your data governance organizational structure

• Most organizations strive to identify roles and responsibilities at a strategic and operational level. Several factors will influence the structure of the program such as the focus of the data governance project as well as the maturity and size of the organization.
• Your data governance structure has to work for your organization, and it has to evolve as the organization evolves.
• Formulate your blend of data governance roles, committees, councils, and cross-functional groups, that make sense for your organization.
• Your data governance organizational structure should not add complexity or bureaucracy to your organization’s data landscape; it should support and enable your principle of treating data as an asset.

There is no one-size-fits-all data governance organizational structure.

Critical roles and responsibilities for data governance

Data Governance Working Groups

Data governance working groups:

• Are cross-functional teams
• Deliver on data governance projects, initiatives, and ad hoc review committees.

Data Stewards

Traditionally, data stewards:

• Serve on an operational level addressing issues related to adherence to standards/procedures, monitoring data quality, raising issues identified, etc.
• Are responsible for managing access, quality, escalating issues, etc.

Data Custodians

• Traditionally, data custodians:

• Serve on an operational level addressing issues related to data and database administration.
• Support the management of access, data quality, escalating issues, etc.
• Are SMEs from IT and database administration.

Example: Business capabilities to data owner and data stewards mapping for a selected data domain

Info-Tech Insight

Your organization’s value streams and the associated business capabilities require effectively governed data. Without this, you face elevated operational costs, missed opportunities, eroded stakeholder satisfaction, and exposure to increased business risk.

Enabling business capabilities with data governance role definitions

Operating Model

Your operating model is the key to designing and operationalizing a form of data governance that delivers measurable business value to your organization.

“Generate excitement for data: When people are excited and committed to the vision of data enablement, they’re more likely to help ensure that data is high quality and safe.” – Petzold, et al., 2020

Operating Model

Defining your data governance operating model will help create a well-oiled program that sustainably delivers value to the organization and manages risks while building and fostering a culture of data excellence along the way. Some organizations are able to establish a formal data governance office, whether independent or attached to the office of the chief data officer. Regardless of how you are organized, data governance requires a home, a leader, and an operating model to ensure its sustainability and evolution.

Examples of focus areas for your operating model:

• Delivery: While there are core tenets to every data governance program, there is a level of variability in the implementation of data governance programs across organizations, sectors, and industries. Every organization has its own particular drivers and mandates, so the level and rigor applied will also vary.

The key is to determine what style will work best in your organization, taking into consideration your organizational culture, executive leadership support (present and ongoing), catalysts such as other enterprise-wide transformative and modernization initiatives, and/or regulatory and compliances drivers.

• Communication: Communication is vital across all levels and stakeholder groups. For instance, there needs to be communication from the data governance office up to senior leadership, as well as communication within the data governance organization, which is typically made up of the data governance steering committee, data governance council, executive sponsor/champion, data stewards, and data custodians and working groups.

Furthermore, communication with the wider organization of data producers, users, and consumers is one of the core elements of the overall data governance communications plan.

Communication is vital for ensuring acceptance of new processes, rules, guidelines, and technologies by all data producers and users as well as for sharing success stories of the program.

Operating Model

Tie the value of data governance and its initiatives back to the business capabilities that are enabled.

“Leading organizations invest in change management to build data supporters and convert the skeptics. This can be the most difficult part of the program, as it requires motivating employees to use data and encouraging producers to share it (and ideally improve its quality at the source)[.]” – Petzold, et al., 2020

Operating Model

Examples of focus areas for your operating model (continued):

• Change management and issue resolution: Data governance initiatives will very likely bring about a level of organizational disruption, with governance recommendations and future state requiring potentially significant business change. This may include a redesign of a substantial number of data processes affecting various business units, which will require tweaking the organization’s culture, thought processes, and procedures surrounding its data.

Preparing people for change well in advance will allow them to take the steps necessary to adapt and reduce potential confrontation. By planning for and efficiently communicating any changes that a data governance initiative may bring, many initial issues can be resolved from the outset.

Attempting to implement change without an effective communications plan can result in disagreements over data control and stalemates between stakeholder units. The recommendations of the governance group must reflect the needs of all stakeholders or there will be pushback.

• Performance measuring, monitoring and reporting: Measuring and reporting on performance, successes, and realization of tangible business value are a must for sustaining, growing, and scaling your data governance program.

Aligning your data governance to the organization's value realization activities enables you to leverage the KPIs of those business capabilities to demonstrate tangible and measurable value. Use terms and language that will resonate with your senior business leadership.