The State of Black Professionals in Tech

Keep inclusion at the forefront to gain the benefits from diversity.

Analysts' Perspective

The experience of Black professionals in technology is unique.

Diversity in tech is not a new topic, and it's not a secret that technology organizations struggle to attract and retain Black employees. Ever since the early '90s, large tech organizations have been dealing with public critique of their lack of diversity. This topic is close to our hearts, but unfortunately while improvements have been made, progress is quite slow.

In recent years, current events have once again brought diversity to the forefront for many organizations. In addition, the pandemic along with talent trends such as "the great resignation" and "quiet quitting" and preparations for a recession have not only impacted diversity at large but also Black professionals in technology. Our previous research has focused on the wider topic of Recruiting and Retaining People of Color in Tech, but we've found that the experiences of persons of color are not all the same.

This study focuses on the unique experience of Black professionals in technology. Over 600 people were surveyed using an online tool; interviews provided additional insights. We're excited to share our findings with you.

Allison Straker Research Director Info-Tech Research Group	Ugbad Farah Research Director Info-Tech Research Group

Demographics

In October 2021, we launched a survey to understand what the Black experience is like for people in technology. We wanted and received a variety of responses which would help us to understand how Black technology professionals experienced their working world. We received responses from 633 professionals, providing us with the data for this report.

For more information on our survey demographics please see the appendix at this end of this report.

26% of our respondents either identified as Black or felt the world sees them as Black.

Professionals from various countries responded to the survey:

• Most respondents were born in the US (52%), Canada (14%), India (14%), or Nigeria (4%).
• Most respondents live in the US (56%), Canada (25%), Nigeria (2%), or the United Kingdom (2%).

Companies with more diversity achieve more revenue from innovation

Organizations do better and are more innovative when they have more diversity, a key ingredient in an organization's secret sauce.
Organizations also benefit from engaged employees, yet we've seen that organizations struggle with both. Just having a certain number of diverse individuals is not enough. When it comes to reaping the benefits of diversity, organizations can flourish when employees feel safe bringing their whole selves to work.

Companies with higher employee engagement experience 19.2% higher earnings.

However, those with lower employee engagement experience 32.7% lower earnings.
(DecisionWise, 2020)

If your workforce doesn't reflect the community it serves, your business may be missing out on the chance to find great employees and break into new and growing markets, both locally and globally.
Diversity makes good business sense.
(Business Development Canada, 2023)

A study about Black professionals

Why is this about Black professionals and not other diverse groups?

While there are a variety of diversity dimensions, it's important to understand what makes up a "multicultural workforce." There is more to diversity than gender, race, and ethnicity. Organizations need to understand that there is diversity within these groups and Black professionals have their own unique experience when it comes to entering and navigating tech that needs to be addressed.

(Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2019)

The solutions that apply to Black professionals are not only beneficial for Black employees but for all. While all demographics are unique, the solutions in this report can support many.

Unsatisfied and underrepresented

Less Black professionals responded as "satisfied" in their IT careers. The question is: How do we mend the Gap?

Percentage of IT Professionals Who Reported Being Very Satisfied in Their Current Role

• All Other Professionals: 34%
• Black Professionals: 23%

Black workers are underrepresented in most professional roles, especially computer and math Occupations

The gap in satisfaction

What's Important?

Our research suggests that the differences in satisfaction among ethnic groups are related to differences in value systems. We asked respondents to rank what's important, and we explored why.

Non-Black professionals rated autonomy and their manager working relationships as most important.

For Black professionals, while those were important, #1 was promotion and growth opportunities, ranked #7 by all other professionals. This is a significant discrepancy.

Recognition of my work/accomplishments also was viewed significantly differently, with Black professionals ranking it low on the list at #7 and all other professionals considering it very important at #3.

All Other Professionals		Black Professionals

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs applies to job satisfaction

In Maslow's hierarchy, it is necessary for people to achieve items lower on the hierarchy before they can successfully pursue the higher tiers.

Too many Black professionals in tech are busy trying to achieve some of the lower parts of the hierarchy; it is stopping them from achieving elements higher up that can lead to job satisfaction.

This can stop them from gaining esteem, importance, and ultimately, self-actualization. The barriers that impact safety and social belonging happen on a day-to-day basis, and so the day-to-day lives of Black professionals in tech can look very different from their counterparts.

There are barriers that hinder and solutions that support employees

There are various barriers that increase the likelihood for Black professionals to focus on the lower end of the needs hierarchy:	These are among some of the solutions that, when layered, can support Black professionals in tech in moving up the needs hierarchy. Focusing on these actions can support Black professionals in achieving much needed job satisfaction.

What does this mean?

The minority experience is not a monolith

The barriers that Black professionals encounter aren't limited to the same barriers as their colleagues, and too often this means that they aren't in a position to grow their careers in a way that leads to job satisfaction.

There is a 11% gap between the satisfaction of Black professionals and their peers.

Early Steps:
Take time to understand the Black experience.

As leaders, it's important to be aware that employee goals vary depending on the barriers they're battling with.

Intermediate:
If Black employees don't have strong relationships, networks, and mentorships it becomes increasingly difficult to navigate the path to upward mobility.

As a leader, you can look for opportunities to bridge the gap on these types of conversations.

Advanced:
Black professionals in tech are not advancing like their counterparts.

Creating clear career paths will not only benefit Black employees but also support your entire organization.

Key metrics:

• Engagement
• Committed Executive Leadership
• Development Opportunities
• Organizational Programs

Black respondents are significantly more likely to report barriers to their career advancement

Common barriers

Black professionals, like their colleagues, encounter barriers as they try to advance their careers. The barriers both groups encounter include microaggressions, racism, ageism, accessibility issues, sexual orientation, bias due to religion, lack of a career-supported network, gender bias, family status bias, and discrimination due to language/accents.

What tops the list

Microaggressions and racism are at the top of these barriers, but Black professionals also deal with other barriers that their colleagues may experience, such as gender-based bias, accessibility issues, religion, and more.

One of these barriers alone can be difficult to deal with but when they are compounded it can be very difficult to navigate through the working environment in tech.

What are microaggressions?

Microaggression

A statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.

(Oxford Languages, 2023)

Why are they significant?

These things may seem innocent enough but the messaging that is received and the lasting impression is often far from it.

Our research shows that racism and discrimination contribute to poor mental health among Black professionals.

Examples

• You're so articulate!
• How do you always have different hair, can I touch it?
• Where are you really from?
• I don't see color.
• I believe the most qualified person should get the job; everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough.

"The experience of having to question whether something happened to you because of your race or constantly being on edge because your environment is hostile can often leave people feeling invisible, silenced, angry, and resentful."
Dr. Joy Bradford,
clinical Psychologist, qtd. In Pfizer

It takes some time to get in the door

For too many Black respondents, It took Longer than their peers to Find Technology Jobs.

Both groups had some success finding jobs in "no time" – however, there was a difference. Thirty-four percent of "all others" found their jobs quickly, while the numbers were less for Black professionals, at 26%. There was also a difference at the opposite end of the spectrum. For 29% of Black professionals, it took seven months or longer to find their IT job, while that number is only 19% for their peers.

.

This points to the need for improvements in recruitment and career advancement.

29% of Black respondents said that it took them 7 months or longer to find their technology job.

Compared to 19% of all other professionals that selected the same response.

And once they're in, it's difficult to advance

Black Professionals are not Advancing as Quickly as their Colleagues. Especially when you look at their Experience.

Our research shows that compared to all other ethnicities; Black participants were 55% more likely to report that they had no career advancement/promotion in their career. There is a bigger percentage of Black professionals who have never received a promotion; there's also a large number of Black professionals who have been working a significant amount time in the same role without a promotion.

.Career Advancement

Black participants were 55% more likely to report that they had had no career advancement/promotion in their career.

No advancement

There's a high cost to lack of engagement

When employees feel disillusioned with things like career advancement and microaggressions, they often become disengaged. When you continuously have to steel yourself against microaggressions, racism, and other barriers, it prevents you from bringing your whole self to the office. The barriers can lead to what's been coined as "emotional tax." An emotional tax is the experience of feeling different from colleagues because of your inherent diversity and the associated negative effects on health, wellbeing, and the ability to thrive at work.

(DecisionWise, 2020)

"I've conditioned myself for the corporate world, I don't bring my authentic self to work."
Anonymous Interview Subject

Lack of engagement also costs the organization in terms of turnover, something many organizations today are struggling with how to address. Organizations want to increase the ability of the workforce to remain in the organization. For Black employees, this gets harder when they're not engaged and they're the only one. When the emotional tax gets to be too much, this can lead to turnover. Turnover not only costs companies billions in profits, it also negatively impacts leadership diversity. It's difficult to imagine career growth when you don't see anyone that looks like you at the top. It is a challenge to see your future when there aren't others that you can relate to at top levels in the organization, leading to one of our interview subjects to muse, "How long can I last?"

"Being Black in tech can be hard on your mental health. Your mind is constantly wondering, 'how long can I last?' "
Anonymous Interview Subject

Fewer Black professionals feel like they can be their authentic selves at work

Authentic vs. Successes

For many Black professionals, "code-switching," or altering the way one speaks and acts depending on context, becomes the norm to make others more comfortable. Many feel that being authentic and succeeding in the workplace are mutually exclusive.

Programs and Resources

We asked respondents "What's in place to build an inclusive culture at your company?" Most respondents (51% and 45%) reported that there were employee resource groups at their organizations.

Do you feel you can be your authentic self at work?

What can be done?

There are various actions that organizations can take to help address barriers.

It's important to ensure these are not put in as band-aid solutions but that they are carefully thought out and layered.

Our findings demonstrate that remote work, career development, and DEI programs along with mentorship and diverse leadership are strong enablers of professional satisfaction. An unfortunate consequence, if professionals are not nurtured, is that we risk losing much needed talent to self-employment or to other organizations.

There are several solutions

Respondents were asked to distribute points across potential solutions that could lead to job satisfaction. The ratings showed that there were common solutions that could be leveraged across all groups.

Respondents were asked what solutions were valuable for their career development.

All groups were mostly aligned on the order of the solutions that would lead to career satisfaction; however, Black professionals rated the importance of employee resource groups as higher than their colleagues did.

Mentorship and sponsorship are seen as key for all employees, as is of course training.

However, employee resource groups (ERGs) were rated significantly higher for Black professionals and discussions around diversity were higher for their colleagues. This may be because other groups feel a need to learn more about diversity, whereas Black professionals live this experience on a day-to day basis, so it's not as critical for them.

Double the number of satisfied Black professionals through mentorship and sponsorship

Mentorship and sponsorship help to close the job satisfaction gap for Black IT professionals. The percentage of satisfied Black employees almost doubles when they have a mentor or sponsorship, moving the satisfaction rate to closer to all other colleagues.

As leaders, you likely benefit from a few different advisors, and your staff should be able to benefit in the same way.

They can have their own personal board of advisors, both inside and outside of your organization, helping them to navigate the working world in IT.

To support your staff, provide guidance and coaching to internal mentors so that they can best support employees, and ensure that your organizational culture supports relationship building and trust.

While all are critical, coaching, mentoring, and sponsorship are not the same

Coaching

Performance-driven guidance geared to support the employee with on-the-job performance. This could be a short-term relationship.

Mentorship

A relationship where the mentor provides guidance, information, and expertise to support the long-term career development of the mentee.

Sponsorship

The act of advocating on the behalf of another for a position, promotion, development opportunity, etc. over a longer period.

For more information on setting up a mentorship program, see Optimize the Mentoring Program to Build a High Performing Learning Organization.

On why mentorship and sponsorship are important:

"With some degree of mentorship or sponsorship, it means that your ability to thrive or to have a positive experience in organizations increases substantially. Mentorship and sponsorship are very often the lynchpin of someone being successful and sticking with an organization. Sponsorship is an endorsement to other high-level stakeholders who very often are the gatekeepers of opportunity. Sponsors help to shepherd you through the gate."

Carlos Thomas Executive Councilor, Info-Tech Research Group

What is an employee resource group?

IT Professionals rated ERGs as the third top driver of success at work

Employee resource groups enable employees to connect in their workplace based on shared characteristics or life experiences.

ERGs generally focus on providing support, enhancing career development, and contributing to personal development in the work environment. Some ERGs provide advice to the organization on how they can support their diverse employees.

As leaders, you should support and encourage the formation of ERGs in your organization.

What each ERG does will vary according to the needs of employees in your organization. Your role is to enable the ERGs as they are created and maintained.

On setting up and leveraging employee resource groups:

"Employee resource groups, when leveraged in an authentically intentional way, can be the some of the most impactful stakeholders in the development and implementation of the organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy. ERGs are essential to the development of policies, programs, and initiatives that address the needs of equity-seeking groups and are key to driving organizational culture and employee wellbeing, in addition to hiring and recruitment. ERGs must be set up for success by having adequate resources to do the work, which includes adequate budgets, executive sponsorship, training, support, and capacity to do the work. According to a Great Place To Work survey (2021), 50% of ERGs identified the need for adequate resources as a challenge for carrying out the work.:"

CINNAMON CLARK PRACTICE LEAD, DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION services, MCLEAN & CO

There is a gap when it comes to diversity in leadership

Representation at leadership levels is especially stagnant.

Black Americans comprise 13.6% of the US population
(2022 data from the US Census Bureau)

And yet only 5.9% of the country's CEOs are Black, with only 6 (1%) at the top of Fortune 500 companies.
(2021 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Fortune.com)

I've never worked for a company that has Black executives. It's difficult to envision long-term growth with an organization when you don't see yourself represented in leadership.
– Anonymous Interview Subject

Having diversity in your leadership team doubles satisfaction

Our research shows that Black professionals are more satisfied in their role when they see leaders that look like them.

Satisfaction of other professionals is not as impacted by diversity in leadership as for Black professionals. Satisfaction doubles in organizations that have a diverse leadership team.

To reap the benefits from diversity, we need to ensure diversity is not just in entry or mid-level positions and provide employees an opportunity to see diversity in their company's leadership.

On the need for diversity in leadership:

"As a Black professional leader, it's not lost on me that I have a responsibility. I have to demonstrate authenticity, professionalism, and exemplary behavior that others can mimic. And I must also showcase that there are possibilities for those coming up in their career. I feel very grateful that I can bestow onto others my knowledge, my experience, my journey, and the tips that I've used to help bring me to be where I am. (Having Black leaders in an organization) demonstrates that there is talent across the board, that there are all types of women and people with proficiencies. What it brings to the table is a difference in thoughts and experience. A person like myself, sitting at the table, can bring a unique perspective on employee behavior and employee impact. CCL is an organization focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion; for sure having me at the table and others that look like me at the table demonstrates to the public an organization that's practicing what it preaches."

C. Fara Francis CIO, Center for creative leadership

Work from home

While all groups have embraced the work-from-home movement, many Black professionals find it reduces the impact of racial incidents in the workplace.

Percentage of employees who experienced positive changes in motivation after working remotely.

I have to guard and protect myself from experiencing and witnessing racism every day. I am currently working remotely, and I can say for certain my mood and demeanor have improved. Not having to decide if I should address a racist comment or action has made my day easier.
Source: Slate, 2022

Remote work significantly led to feelings of better chances for career advancement

Survey respondents were asked about the positive and negative changes they saw in their interactions and experiences with remote work. Black employees and their colleagues replied similarly, with mostly positive experiences.

While both groups enjoyed better chances for career advancement, the difference was significantly higher for Black professionals.

Reasons for Self-Employment:

More Black professionals have chosen self-employment than their colleagues.

The biggest reasons for both groups in choosing self-employment were for better pay, career growth, and work/life balance.

While the desire for better pay was the highest reason for both groups, for engaged employees salary is a lower priority than other concerns (Adecco Group's Global Workforce of the Future report). Consider salary in conjunction with career growth, work/life balance, and the variety in the work that your employees have.

If we don't consider our Black employees, not only do we risk them leaving the organization, but they may decide to just work for themselves.

Most professionals believe their organizations are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion

38% of all respondents believe their organizations are very committed to DEI
49% believe they are somewhat committed
9% feel they are not committed
4% are unsure

Make sure supports are in place to help your employees grow in their careers:

Leadership
IT Leadership Career Planning Research Center

Diversity and Inclusion Tactics
IT Diversity & Inclusion Tactics

Employee Development Planning
Implement an IT Employee Development Plan

Belief in your organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts isn't consistent across groups: Make sure actions are seen as genuine

While organization's efforts are acknowledged, Black professionals aren't as optimistic about the commitment as their peers. Make sure that your programs are reaching the various groups you want to impact, to increase the likelihood of satisfaction in their roles.

SATISFACTION INCREASES IN BOTH BLACK AND NON-BLACK PROFESSIONALS

When they believe in their company's commitment to diversity, equity. and inclusion.

Of those who believe in their organization's commitment, 61% of Black professionals and 67% of non-Black professionals are very satisfied in their roles.

Recommendations

It's important to understand the current landscape:

• The barriers that Black employees often face.
• The potential solutions that can help close the gap in employee satisfaction.

We recognize that resolving this is not easy. Although senior executives are recognizing that a diverse set of experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds is crucial to fostering innovation and competing on the global stage, organizations often don't take the extra step to actively look for racialized talent, and many people still believe that race doesn't play an important part in an individual's ability to access opportunities.

Look at a variety of solutions that you can implement within your organization; layering solutions is the key to driving business diversity. Always keep in mind that diversity is not a monolith, that the experiences of each demographic varies.

Info-Tech resources

• Recruit IT Talent
• Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT
• Recruit and Retain People of Color in IT Webinar

Appendix

About the research

Diversity in tech survey

As part of the research process for the State of Black Tech Report, Info-Tech Research Group conducted an open online survey among its membership and wider community of professionals. The survey was fielded from October 2021 to April 2022, collecting 633 responses.

Current Position

Education and Experience

Education was fairly consistent across both groups, with a few exceptions: more Black professionals had secondary school (9% vs. 4%) and more Black professionals had Doctorate degrees (4% vs. 2%).

We had more non-Black respondents with 20+ years of experience (31% vs. 19%) and more Black respondents with less than 1 year of experience (8% vs. 5%) – the rest of the years of experience were consistent across the two groups.

It is important to recognize that people are often seen by "the world" as belonging to a different race or set of races than what they personally identify as. Both aspects impact a professional's experience in the workplace.

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“Employed Persons by Detailed Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed February 14, 2023.

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Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

Create a cohesive, omnichannel framework that supports the right transactions through the right channels for the right customers.

Analyst Perspective

A clearly outlined commerce strategy is a necessary component of a broader customer experience strategy.

Ben Dickie
Research Lead, Research – Applications
Info-Tech Research Group

“Your commerce strategy is where the rubber hits the road, converting your prospects into paying customers. To maximize revenue (and provide a great customer experience), it’s essential to have a clearly defined commerce strategy in place.

A strong commerce strategy seeks to understand your target customer personas and commerce journey maps and pair these with the right channels and enabling technologies. There is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach to selecting the right commerce channels: while many organizations are making a heavy push into e-commerce and mobile commerce, others are seeking to differentiate themselves by innovating in traditional brick-and-mortar sales. Hybrid channel design now dominates many commerce strategies – using a blend of e-commerce and other channels to deliver the best-possible customer experience.

IT leaders must work with the business to create a succinct commerce strategy that defines personas and scenarios, outlines the right channel matrix, and puts in place the right enabling technologies (for example, point-of-sale and e-commerce platforms).”

Stop! Are you ready for this project?

This Research Is Designed For:

• IT leaders and business analysts supporting their commercial and marketing organizations in developing and executing a technology enablement strategy for e-commerce or brick-and-mortar commerce.
• Any organization looking to develop a persona-based approach to identifying the right channels for their commerce strategy.

This Research Will Help You:

• Identify key personas and customer journeys for a brick-and-mortar and/or e-commerce strategy.
• Select the right channels for your commerce strategy and build a commerce channel matrix to codify the results.
• Review the “art of the possible” and new developments in brick-and-mortar and e-commerce execution.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• Sales managers, brand managers, and any marketing professional looking to build a cohesive commerce strategy.
• E-commerce or POS project teams or working groups tasked with managing an RFP process for vendor selection.

This Research Will Help Them:

• Build a persona-centric commerce strategy.
• Understand key technology trends in the brick-and-mortar and e-commerce space.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Today’s customers expect to be able to transact with you in the channels of their choice.

The proliferation of e-commerce, innovations in brick-and-mortar retail, and developments in mobile commerce and social media selling mean that IT organizations are managing added complexity in drafting a strategy for commerce enablement.

The right technology stack is critical to support world-class e-commerce and brick-and-mortar interactions with customers.

Common Obstacles

Many organizations do not define strong, customer-centric drivers for dictating which channels they should be investing in for transactional capabilities.

As many retailers look to move shopping experiences online during the pandemic, the impetus for having a strong e-commerce suite has markedly increased. The proliferation of commerce vendors has made it difficult to identify and shortlist the right solution, while the pandemic has also highlighted the importance of adopting new vendors quickly and efficiently: companies need to understand the top players in different commerce market landscapes.

IT is receiving a growing number of commerce platform requests and must be prepared to speak intelligently about requirements and the “art of the possible.”

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Leverage Info-Tech’s proven, road-tested approach to using personas and scenarios to build strong business drivers for your commerce strategy.
• Before selecting and deploying technology solutions, create a cohesive channel matrix outlining which channels your organization will support with transactional capabilities.
• Understand evolving trends in the commerce solution space, such as AI-driven product recommendations and integration with other essential enterprise applications (i.e. customer relationship management [CRM] and marketing automation platforms).
• Understand and apply operational best practices such as content optimization and dynamic personalization to improve the conversion rate via your e-commerce channels.

Info-Tech Insight

• Support the right transactional channels for the right customers: there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to commerce enablement – understand your customers to drive selection of the right transactional channels.
• Don’t assume that “traditional” commerce channels have stagnated: IoT, customer analytics, and blended retail are reinvigorating brick-and-mortar selling.
• Don’t buy best-of-breed; buy best-for-you: base commerce vendor selection on your requirements and use cases, not on the vendor’s overall performance.

A strong commerce strategy is an essential component of a savvy approach to customer experience management

A commerce strategy outlines an organization’s approach to selling its products and services. A strong commerce strategy identifies target customers’ personas, commerce journeys that the organization wants to support, and the channels that the organization will use to transact with customers.

Many commerce strategies encompass two distinct but complementary branches: a commerce strategy for transacting through traditional channels and an e-commerce strategy. While the latter often receives more attention from IT, it still falls on IT leaders to provide the appropriate enabling technologies to support traditional brick-and-mortar channels as well. Traditional channels have also undergone a digital renaissance in recent years, with forward-looking companies capitalizing on new technology to enhance customer experiences in their stores.

Traditional Channels

• Physical Stores (Brick and Mortar)
• Kiosks or Pop-Up Stores
• Telesales
• Mail Orders
• EDI Transactions

E-Commerce Channels

• E-Commerce Websites
• Mobile Commerce Apps
• Embedded Social Shopping
• Customer Portals
• Configure Price Quote Tool Sets (CPQ)
• Hybrid Retail

Info-Tech Insight

To better serve their customers, many companies position themselves as “click-and-mortar” shops – allowing customers to transact at a store or online.

Customers’ expectations are on the rise: meet them!

Today’s consumers expect speed, convenience, and tailored experiences at every stage of the customer lifecycle. Successful organizations strive to support these expectations.

58%
of retail customers admitted that their expectations now are higher than they were a year ago (FinancesOnline).

70%
of consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 have increasing customer expectations year after year (FinancesOnline).

69%
of consumers now expect store associates to be armed with a mobile device to deliver value-added services, such as looking up product information and checking inventory (V12).

73%
of support leaders agree that customer expectations are increasing, but only…

42%
of support leaders are confident that they’re actually meeting those expectations.

How can you be sure that you are meeting your customers’ expectations?

1. Offer more personalization throughout the entire customer journey
2. Practice quality customer service – ensure staff have up-to-date knowledge and offer quick resolution time for complaints
3. Focus on offering low-effort experiences and easy-to-use platforms (i.e. “one-click buying”)
4. Ensure your products and services perform well and do what they’re meant to do
5. Ensure omnichannel availability – 9 in 10 consumers want a seamless omnichannel experience

Info-Tech Insight

Customers expect to interact with organizations through the channels of their choice. Now more than ever, you must enable your organization to provide tailored commerce and transactional experiences.

Omnichannel commerce is the way of the future

Create a strategy that embraces this reality with the right tools!

Get ahead of the competition by doing omnichannel right! Devise a strategy that allows you to create and maintain a consistent, seamless commerce experience by optimizing operations with an omnichannel framework. Customers want to interact with you on their own terms, and it falls to IT to ensure that applications are in place to support and manage both traditional and e-commerce channels. There must also be consistency of copy, collateral, offers, and pricing between commerce channels.

71%
of consumers want a consistent experience across all channels, but only…

29%
say that they actually get it.

(Source: Business 2 Community, 2020)

Omnichannel is a “multichannel approach that aims to provide customers with a personalized, integrated, and seamless shopping experience across diverse touchpoints and devices.”
Source: RingCentral, 2021

IT is responsible for providing technology enablement of the commerce strategy: e-commerce platforms are a cornerstone

An e-commerce platform is an enterprise application that provides end-to-end capabilities for allowing customers to purchase products or services from your company via an online channel (e.g. a traditional website, a mobile application, or an embedded link in a social media post). Modern e-commerce platforms are essential for delivering a frictionless customer journey when it comes to purchasing online.

$6.388
trillion dollars worth of sales will be conducted online by 2024 (eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021).

44%
of all e-commerce transactions are expected to be completed via a mobile device by 2024 (Insider).

21.8%
of all sales will be made from online purchases by 2024 (eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021).

Strong E-Commerce Platforms Enable a Wide Range of Functional Areas:

• Product Catalog Management
• Web Content Delivery
• Product Search Engine
• Inventory Management
• Shopping Cart Management
• Discount and Coupon Management
• Return Management and Reverse Logistics
• Dynamic Personalization
• Dynamic Promotions
• Predictive Re-Targeting
• Predictive Product Recommendations
• Transaction Processing
• Compliance Management
• Commerce Workflow Management
• Loyalty Program Management
• Reporting and Analytics

An e-commerce solution boosts the effectiveness and efficiency of your operations and drives top-line growth

Take time to learn the capabilities of modern e-commerce applications. Understanding the “art of the possible” will help you to get the most out of your e-commerce platform.

An e-commerce platform helps marketers and sales staff in three primary ways:

1. It allows the organization to effectively and efficiently operate e-commerce operations at scale.
2. It allows commercial staff to have a single system for managing and monitoring all commercial activity through online channels.
3. It allows the organization to improve the customer-facing e-commerce experience, boosting conversions and top-line sales.

A dedicated e-commerce platform improves the efficiency of customer-commerce operations

• Workflow automation reduces the amount of time spent executing dynamic e-commerce campaigns.
• The use of internal or third-party data increases conversion effectiveness from customer databases across the organization.

Info-Tech Insight

A strong e-commerce provides marketers with the data they need to produce actionable insights about their customers.

Case Study

INDUSTRY - Retail
SOURCE - Salesforce (a)

PetSmart improves customer experience by leveraging a new commerce platform in the Salesforce ecosystem

PetSmart

PetSmart is a leading retailer of pet products, with a heavy footprint across North America. Historically, PetSmart was a brick-and-mortar retailer, but it has placed a heavy emphasis on being a true multi-channel “click-and-mortar” retailer to ensure it maintains relevance against competitors like Amazon.

E-Commerce Overhaul Initiative

To improve its e-commerce capabilities, PetSmart recognized that it needed to consolidate to a single, unified e-commerce platform to realize a 360-degree view of its customers. A new platform was also required to power dynamic and engaging experiences, with appropriate product recommendations and tailored content. To pursue this initiative, the company settled on Salesforce.com’s Commerce Cloud product after an exhaustive requirements definition effort and rigorous vendor selection approach.

Results

After platform implementation, PetSmart was able to effortlessly handle the massive transaction volumes associated with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and deliver 1:1 experiences that boosted conversion rates.

PetSmart standardized on the Commerce Cloud from Salesforce to great effect.

Case Study

Icebreaker exceeds customer expectations by using AI to power product recommendations

INDUSTRY - Retail
SOURCE - Salesforce (b)

Icebreaker

Icebreaker is a leading outerwear and lifestyle clothing company, operating six global websites and owning over 5,000 stores across 50 countries. Icebreaker is focused on providing its shoppers with accurate, real-time product suggestions to ensure it remains relevant in an increasingly competitive online market.

E-Commerce Overhaul Initiative

To improve its e-commerce capabilities, Icebreaker recognized that it needed to adopt a predictive recommendation engine that would offer its customers a more personalized shopping experience. This new system would need to leverage relevant data to provide both known and anonymous shoppers with product suggestions that are of interest to them. To pursue this initiative, Icebreaker settled on using Salesforce.com’s Commerce Cloud Einstein, a fully integrated AI.

Results

After integrating Commerce Cloud Einstein on all its global sites, Icebreaker was able to cross-sell and up-sell its merchandise more effectively by providing its shoppers with accurate product recommendations, ultimately increasing average order value.

IT must also provide technology enablement for other channels, such as point-of-sale systems for brick-and-mortar

Point-of-sale systems are the “real world” complement to e-commerce platforms. They provide functional capabilities for selling products in a physical store, including basic inventory management, cash register management, payment processing, and retail analytics. Many firms struggle with legacy POS environments that inhibit a modern customer experience.

$27.338
trillion dollars in retail sales are expected to be made globally in 2022 (eMarketer, 2022).

84%
of consumers believe that retailers should be doing more to integrate their online and offline channels (Invoca).

39%
of consumers are unlikely or very unlikely to visit a retailer’s store if the online store doesn’t provide physical store inventory information (V12).

Strong Point-of-Sale Platforms Enable a Wide Range of Functional Areas:

• Product Catalog Management
• Discount Management
• Coupon Management and Administration
• Cash Management
• Cash Register Reconciliation
• Product Identification (Barcode Management)
• Payment Processing
• Compliance Management
• Basic Inventory Management
• Commerce Workflow Management
• Exception Reporting and Overrides
• Loyalty Program Management
• Reporting and Analytics

E-commerce and POS don’t live in isolation

They’re key components of a well-oiled customer experience ecosystem!

Integrate commerce solutions with other customer experience applications – and with ERP or logistics systems – to handoff transactions for order fulfilment.

Having a customer master database – the central place where all up-to-the-minute data on a customer profile is stored – is essential for traditional and e-commerce success. Typically, the POS or e-commerce platform is not the system of record for the master customer profile: this information lives in a CRM platform or customer data warehouse. Conceptually, this system is at the center of the customer-experience ecosystem.

Strong POS and e-commerce solutions orchestrate transactions but typically do not do the heavy lifting in terms of order fulfilment, shipping logistics, economic inventory management, and reverse logistics (returns). In an enterprise-grade environment, these activities are executed by an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution – integrating your commerce systems with a back-end ERP solution is a crucial step from an application architecture point of view.

Case Study

INDUSTRY - Retail
SOURCES - Amazon, n.d. CNET, 2020

Amazon is creating a hybrid omnichannel experience for retail by introducing innovative brick-and-mortar stores

Amazon

Amazon began as an online retailer of books in the mid-1990s, and rapidly expanded its product portfolio to nearly every category imaginable. Often hailed as the foremost success story in online commerce, the firm has driven customer loyalty via consistently strong product recommendations and a well-designed site.

Bringing Physical Retail Into the Digital Age

Beginning in 2016 (and expanding in 2018), Amazon introduced Amazon Go, a next-generation grocery retailer, to the Seattle market. While most firms that pursue an e-commerce strategy traditionally come from a brick-and-mortar background, Amazon upended the usual narrative: the world’s largest online retailer opening physical stores to become a true omnichannel, “click-and-mortar” vendor. From the get-go, Amazon Go focused on innovating the physical retail experience – using cameras, IoT capabilities, and mobile technologies to offer “checkout-free” virtual shopping carts that automatically know what products customers take off the shelves and bill their Amazon accounts accordingly.

Results

Amazon received a variety of industry and press accolades for re-inventing the physical store experience and it now owns and operates seven separate store brands, with more still on the horizon.

Case Study

INDUSTRY - Retail
SOURCES - Glossy, 2020

Old Navy

Old Navy is a clothing and accessories retail company that owns and operates over 1,200 stores across North America and China. Typically, Old Navy has relied on using traditional marketing approaches, but recently it has shifted to producing more digitally focused campaigns to drive revenue.

Bringing Physical Retail Into the Digital Age

To overcome pandemic-related difficulties, including temporary store closures, Old Navy knew that it had to have strong holiday sales in 2020. With the goal of stimulating retail sales growth and maximizing its pre-existing omnichannel capabilities, Old Navy decided to focus more of its holiday campaign efforts online than in years past. With this campaign centered on connected TV platforms, such as Hulu, and social media channels including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, Old Navy was able to take a more unique, fun, and good-humored approach to marketing.

Results

Old Navy’s digitally focused campaign was a success. When compared with third quarter sales figures from 2019, third quarter net sales for 2020 increased by 15% and comparable sales increased by 17%.

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

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Workshop

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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 used throughout all four options

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.

Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers – Project Overview

Phase 1

Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy

1.1 Assess Personas and Scenarios

1.2 Create Key Drivers and Metrics

Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

Step 1.1

Assess Personas and Scenarios

This step will walk you through the following activities:

1.1.1 Build key customer personas for your commerce strategy.

1.1.2 Create commerce scenarios (journey maps) that you need to enable.

Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step:

• Critical customer personas
• Key traditional and e-commerce scenarios

Use customer personas to picture who will be using your commerce channels and guide scenario design and key drivers

What Are Personas?

Personas are detailed descriptions of the targeted audience of your e-commerce presence. Effective personas:

• Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups.
• Give a clear picture of the typical user’s behavior.
• Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality.
• Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values.

Source: Usability.gov, n.d.

Why Are Personas Important?

Personas help:

• Focus the development of commerce platform features on the immediate needs of the intended audience.
• Detail the level of customization needed to ensure content is valuable to the user.
• Describe how users may behave when certain audio and visual stimulus are triggered from the website.
• Outline the special design considerations required to meet user accessibility needs.

Key Elements of a Persona:

• Persona Group (e.g. executives)
• Demographics (e.g. nationality, age, language spoken)
• Purpose of Using Commerce Channels (e.g. product search versus ready to transact)
• Typical Behaviors and Tendencies (e.g. goes to different websites when cannot find products in 20 seconds)
• Technological Environment of User (e.g. devices, browsers, network connection)
• Professional and Technical Skills and Experiences (e.g. knowledge of websites, area of expertise)

Use Info-Tech’s guidelines to assist in the creation of personas

How many personas should I create?

The number of personas that should be created is based on the organizational coverage of your commerce strategy. Here are some questions you should ask:

• Do the personas cover a majority of your revenues or product lines?
• Is the number manageable for your project team to map out?

How do I prioritize which personas to create?

The identified personas should generate the most revenue – or provide a significant opportunity – for your business. Here are some questions that you should ask:

• Are the personas prioritized based on the revenue they generate for the business?
• Is the persona prioritization process considering both the present and future revenues the persona is generating?

Sample: persona for e-commerce platform

Example

Persona quote: “After I call the company about the widget, I would usually go onto the company’s website and look at further details about the product. How am I supposed to do so when it is so hard to find the company’s website on everyday search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing?”

Michael is a middle-aged manager working in the financial district. He wants to buy the company’s widgets for use in his home, but since he is distrusting of online shopping, he prefers to call the company’s call center first. Afterwards, if Michael is convinced by the call center representative, he will look at the company’s website for further research before making his purchase.

Michael does not have a lot of free time on his hands, and tries to make his free time as relaxing as possible. Due to most of his work being client-facing, he is not in front of a computer most of the time during his work. As such, Michael does not consider himself to be skilled with technology. Once he makes the decision to purchase, Michael will conduct online transactions and pay most delivery costs due to his shortage of time.

Needs:

• Easy-to-find website and widget information.
• Online purchasing and delivery services.
• Answer to his questions about the widget.
• To maintain contact post-purchase for easy future transactions.

Info-Tech Tip

The quote attached to a persona should be from actual quotes that your customers have used when you reviewed your voice of the customer (VoC) surveys or focus groups to drive home the impact of their issues with your company.

1.1.1 Activity: Build personas for your key customers that you’ll need to support via traditional and e-commerce channels

1 hour

1. In two to four groups, list all the major, target customer personas that need to be built. In doing so, consider the people who interact with your e-commerce site (or other channels) most often.
2. Build a demographic profile for each customer persona. Include information such as age, geographic location, occupation, and annual income.
3. Augment the persona with a psychographic profile. Consider the goals and objectives of each customer persona and how these might inform buyer behaviors.
4. Introduce your group’s personas to the entire group, in a round-robin fashion, as if you are introducing your persona at a party.
5. Summarize the personas in a persona map. Rank your personas according to importance and remove any duplicates.
6. Use Info-Tech’s Create Personas to Drive Omnichannel Requirements Template to assist.

Info-Tech Insight

Persona building is typically used for understanding the external customer; however, if you need to gain a better understanding of the organization’s internal customers (those who will be interacting with the e-commerce platform), personas can also be built for this purpose. Examples of useful internal personas are sales managers, brand managers, and customer service directors.

1.1.1 Activity: Build personas for your key customers that you’ll need to support via traditional and e-commerce channels (continued)

Input

• Customer demographics and psychographics

Output

• List of prioritized customer personas

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Project team

Build use-case scenarios to model the transactional customer journey and inform drivers for your commerce strategy

A use-case scenario is a story or narrative that helps explore the set of interactions that a customer has with an organization. Scenario mapping will help identify key business and technology drivers as well as more granular functional requirements for POS or e-commerce platform selection.

A GOOD SCENARIO…

• Describes specific task(s) that need to be accomplished.
• Describes user goals and motivations.
• Describes interactions with a compelling but not overwhelming amount of detail.
• Can be rough, as long as it provokes ideas and discussion.

SCENARIOS ARE USED TO...

• Provide a shared understanding about what a user might want to do and how they might want to do it.
• Help construct the sequence of events that are necessary to address in your user interface(s).

TO CREATE GOOD SCENARIOS…

• Keep scenarios high level, not granular, in nature.
• Identify as many scenarios as possible. If you’re time constrained, try to develop two to three key scenarios per persona.
• Sketch each scenario out so that stakeholders understand the goal of the scenario.

1.1.2 Exercise: Build commerce user scenarios to understand what you want your customers to do from a transactional viewpoint

1 hour

Example

Simplified E-Commerce Workflow Purchase Products

Step 1.2

Create Key Drivers and Metrics

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Create the business drivers you need to enable with your commerce strategy.
• Enumerate metrics to track the efficacy of your commerce strategy.

Identify Critical Drivers for Your Omnichannel Commerce Strategy

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step:

• Business drivers for the commerce strategy
• Metrics and key performance indicators for the commerce strategy

1.2 Finish elaboration of your scenarios and map them to your personas: identify core business drivers for commerce

1.5 hours

1. List all commerce scenarios required to satisfy the immediate needs of your personas.
   1. Does the use-case scenario address commonly felt user challenges?
   2. Can the scenario be used by those with changing behaviors and tendencies?
2. Look for recurring themes in use-case scenarios (for example, increasing average transaction cost through better product recommendations) and identify business drivers: drivers are common thematic elements that can be found across multiple scenarios. These are the key principles for your commerce strategy.
3. Prioritize your use cases by leveraging the priorities of your business drivers.

Example

1.2 Finish elaboration of your scenarios and map them to your personas: identify core business drivers for commerce (continuation)

Input

• User personas

Output

• List of use cases
• Alignment of use cases to business objectives

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Business Analyst
• Developer
• Designer

Show the benefits of commerce solution deployment with metrics aimed at both overall efficacy and platform adoption

The ROI and perceived value of the organization’s e-commerce and POS solutions will be a critical indication of the success of the suite’s selection and implementation.

Info-Tech Insight

Even if e-commerce metrics are difficult to track right now, the implementation of a dedicated e-commerce platform brings access to valuable customer intelligence from data that was once kept in silos.

Phase 2

Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies

2.1 Build the Commerce Channel Matrix

2.2 Review Technology and Trends Primer

Enable Omnichannel Commerce That Delights Your Customers

Step 2.1

Build the Commerce Channel Matrix

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Based on your business drivers, create a blended mix of e-commerce channels that will suit your organization’s and customers’ needs.

Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step:

• Commerce channel map

Pick the transactional channels that align with your customer personas and enable your target scenarios and drivers

Info-Tech Insight

Your channel selections should be driven by customer personas and scenarios. For example, social media may be extensively employed by some persona types (i.e. millennials) but see limited adoption in other demographics or use cases (i.e. B2B).

2.1 Activity: Build your commerce channel matrix

30 minutes

1. Inventory which transactional channels are currently used by your firm (segment by product lines if variation exists).
2. Interview product leaders, sales leaders, and marketing managers to determine if channels support transactional capabilities or are used for marketing and service delivery.
3. Review your customer personas, scenarios, and drivers and assess which of the channels you will use in the future to sell products and services. Document below.

Example: Commerce Channel Map

Input

• Personas, scenarios, and driver

Output

• Channel map

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Markers

Participants

• Project team

Step 2.2

Review Technology and Trends Primer

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Review the scope of e-commerce and POS solutions and understand key drivers impacting e-commerce and traditional commerce.

Map Drivers to the Right Channels and Technologies

This step involves the following participants:

• Business stakeholders (Sales, Marketing)
• IT project team

Outcomes of this step:

• Understanding of key technologies
• Understanding of key trends

Application spotlight: e-commerce platforms

How It Enables Your Strategy

• Modern e-commerce platforms provide capabilities for end-to-end orchestration of online commerce experiences, from product site deployment to payment processing.
• Some e-commerce platforms are purpose-built for business-to-business (B2B) commerce, emphasizing customer portals and EDI features. Other e-commerce vendors place more emphasis on business-to-consumer (B2C) capabilities, such as product catalog management and executing transactions at scale.
• There has been an increasing degree of overlap between traditional web experience management solutions and the e-commerce market; for example, in 2018, Adobe acquired Magento to augment its overall web experience offering within Adobe Experience Manager.
• E-commerce platforms typically fall short when it comes to order fulfilment and logistics; this piece of the puzzle is typically orchestrated via an ERP system or logistics management module.
• This research provides a starting place for defining e-commerce requirements and selection artefacts.

Key Trends

• E-commerce vendors are rapidly supporting a variety of form factors and integration with other channels such as social media. Mobile is sufficiently popular that some vendors and industry commentators refer to it as “m-commerce” to differentiate app-based shopping experiences from those accessed through a traditional browser.
• Hybrid commerce is driving more interplay between e-commerce solutions and POS.

E-Commerce KPIs

Strong e-commerce applications can improve:

• Bounce Rates
• Exit Rates
• Lead Conversion Rates
• Cart Abandonment Rates
• Re-Targeting Efficacy
• Average Cart Size
• Average Cart Value
• Customer Lifetime Value
• Aggregate Reach/Impressions

Familiarize yourself with the e-commerce market

How it got here

Initial Traction as the Dot-Com Era Came to Fruition

Unlike some enterprise application markets, such as CRM, the e-commerce market appeared almost overnight during the mid-to-late nineties as the dot-com explosion fueled the need to have reliable solutions for executing transactions online.

Early e-commerce solutions were less full-fledged suites than they were mediums for payment processing and basic product list management. PayPal and other services like Digital River were pioneers in the space, but their functionality was limited vis-à-vis tools such as web content management platforms, and their ability to amalgamate and analyze the data necessary for dynamic personalization and re-targeting was virtually non-existent.

Rapidly Expanding Scope of Functional Capabilities as the Market Matured

As marketers became more sophisticated and companies put an increased focus on customer experience and omnichannel interaction, the need arose for platforms that were significantly more feature rich than their early contemporaries. In this context, vendors such as Shopify and Demandware stepped into the limelight, offering far richer functionality and analytics than previous offerings, such as asset management, dynamic personalization, and the ability to re-target customers who abandoned their carts.

As the market has matured, there has also been a series of acquisitions of some players (for example, Demandware by Salesforce) and IPOs of others (i.e. Shopify). Traditional payment-oriented services like PayPal still fill an important niche, while newer entrants like Square seek to disrupt both the e-commerce market and point-of-sale solutions to boot.

Familiarize yourself with the e-commerce market

Where it’s going

Support for a Proliferation of Form Factors and Channels

Modern e-commerce solutions are expanding the number of form factors (smartphones, tablets) they support via both responsive design and in-app capabilities. Many platforms now also support embedded purchasing options in non-owned channels (for example, social media). With the pandemic leading to a heightened affinity for online shopping, the importance of fully using these capabilities has been further emphasized.

AI and Machine Learning

E-commerce is another customer experience domain ripe for transformation via the potential of artificial intelligence. Machine learning algorithms are being used to enhance the effectiveness of dynamic personalization of product collateral, improve the accuracy of product recommendations, and allow for more effective re-targeting campaigns of customers who did not make a purchase.

Merger of Online Commerce and Traditional Point-of-Sale

Many e-commerce vendors – particularly the large players – are now going beyond traditional e-commerce and making plays into brick-and-mortar environments, offering point-of-sale capabilities and the ability to display product assets and customizations via augmented reality – truly blending the physical and virtual shopping experience.

Emphasis on Integration with the Broader Customer Experience Ecosystem

The big names in e-commerce recognize they don’t live on an island: out-of-the-box integrations with popular CRM, web experience, and marketing automation platforms have been increasing at a breakneck pace. Support for digital wallets has also become increasingly popular, with many vendors integrating contactless payment technology (i.e. Apple Pay) directly into their applications.

E-Commerce Vendor Snapshot: Part 1

Mid-Market E-Commerce Solutions

E-Commerce Vendor Snapshot: Part 2

Large Enterprise and Full-Suite E-Commerce Platforms

Speak with category experts to dive deeper into the vendor landscape

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Evaluate software category leaders through vendor rankings and awards

SoftwareReviews

The Data Quadrant is a thorough evaluation and ranking of all software in an individual category to compare platforms across multiple dimensions.

Vendors are ranked by their Composite Score, based on individual feature evaluations, user satisfaction rankings, vendor capability comparisons, and likeliness to recommend the platform.

The Emotional Footprint is a powerful indicator of overall user sentiment toward the relationship with the vendor, capturing data across five dimensions.

Vendors are ranked by their Customer Experience (CX) Score, which combines the overall Emotional Footprint rating with a measure of the value delivered by the solution.

Leading B2B E-Commerce Platforms

As of February 2022

Data Quadrant

Emotional Footprint

Leading B2C E-Commerce Platforms

As of February 2022

Data Quadrant

Emotional Footprint

Application spotlight: point-of-sale solutions

How It Enables Your Strategy

• Point-of-sale solutions provide capabilities for cash register/terminal management, transaction processing, and lightweight inventory management.
• Many POS vendors also offer products that have the ability to create orders from EDI, phone, or fax channels.
• An increasing emphasis has been placed on retail analytics by POS vendors – providing reporting and analysis tools to help with inventory planning, promotion management, and product recommendations.
• Integration of POS systems with a central customer data warehouse or other system of record for customer information allows for the ability to build richer customer profiles and compare shopping habits in physical stores against other transactional channels that are offered.
• POS vendors often offer (or integrate with) loyalty management solutions to track, manage, and redeem loyalty points. See this note on loyalty management systems.
• Legacy and/or homegrown POS systems tend to be an area of frustration for customer experience management modernization.

Key Trends

• POS solutions are moving from “cash-register-only” solutions to encompass mobile POS form factors like smartphones and tablets. Vendors such as Square have experienced tremendous growth in opening up the market via “mPOS” platforms that have lower costs to entry than the traditional hardware needed to support full-fledged POS solutions.
• This development puts robust POS toolsets in the hands of small and medium businesses that otherwise would be priced out of the market.

POS KPIs

Strong POS applications can improve:

• Customer Data Collection
• Inventory or Cash Shrinkage
• Cost per Transaction
• Loyalty Program Administration Costs
• Cycle Time for Transaction Execution

Point-of-Sales Vendor Snapshot: Part 1

Mid-Market POS Solutions

Point-of-Sales Vendor Snapshot: Part 2

Large Enterprise POS Platforms

Leading Retail POS Systems

As of February 2022

Data Quadrant

Emotional Footprint

Summary of Accomplishment

Knowledge Gained

• Commerce channel framework
• Customer affinities
• Commerce channel overview
• Commerce-enabling technologies

Processes Optimized

• Persona definition for commerce strategy
• Persona channel shortlist

Deliverables Completed

• Customer personas
• Commerce user scenarios
• Business drivers for traditional commerce and e-commerce
• Channel matrix for omnichannel commerce

Bibliography

“25 Amazing Omnichannel Statistics Every Marketer Should Know (Updated for 2021).” V12, 29 June 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

“Amazon Go.” Amazon, n.d. Web.

Andersen, Derek. “33 Statistics Retail Marketers Need to Know in 2021.” Invoca, 19 July 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

Andre, Louie. “115 Critical Customer Support Software Statistics: 2022 Market Share Analysis & Data.” FinancesOnline, 14 Jan. 2022. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

Chuang, Courtney. “The future of support: 5 key trends that will shape customer care in 2022.” Intercom, 10 Jan. 2022. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

Cramer-Flood, Ethan. “Global Ecommerce Update 2021.” eMarketer, 13 Jan. 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

Cramer-Flood, Ethan. “Spotlight on total global retail: Brick-and-mortar returns with a vengeance.” eMarketer, 3 Feb. 2022. Accessed 12 Apr. 2022.

Fox Rubin, Ben. “Amazon now operates seven different kinds of physical stores. Here's why.” CNET, 28 Feb. 2020. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

Krajewski, Laura. “16 Statistics on Why Omnichannel is the Future of Your Contact Center and the Foundation for a Top-Notch Competitive Customer Experience.” Business 2 Community, 10 July 2020. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

Manoff, Jill. “Fun and convenience: CEO Nany Green on Old Navy’s priorities for holiday.” Glossy, 8 Dec. 2020. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

Meola, Andrew. “Rise of M-Commerce: Mobile Ecommerce Shopping Stats & Trends in 2021.” Insider, 30 Dec. 2020. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

“Outdoor apparel retailer Icebreaker uses AI to exceed shopper expectations.” Salesforce, n.d.(a). Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

“Personas.” Usability.gov., n.d. Web. 28 Aug. 2018.

“PetSmart – Why Commerce Cloud?” Salesforce, n.d.(b). Web. 30 April 2018.

Toor, Meena. “Customer expectations: 7 Types all exceptional researchers must understand.” Qualtrics, 3 Dec. 2020. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

Westfall, Leigh. “Omnichannel vs. multichannel: What's the difference?” RingCentral, 10 Sept. 2021. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

“Worldwide ecommerce will approach $5 trillion this year.” eMarketer, 14 Jan. 2021. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

Right-Size the Service Desk for Small Enterprise

Turn your help desk into a customer-centric service desk.

Analyst Perspective

Small enterprises have many of the same issues as large ones, but with far fewer resources. Focus on the most important aspects to improve customer service.

The service desk is a major function within IT. Small enterprises with constrained resources need to look at designing a service desk that enables consistency in supporting the business and finds the right balance of documentation.

Evaluate documentation to ensure there is always redundancy built in to cover absences. Determining coverage will be an important factor, especially if vendors will be brought into the organization to assist during shortages. They will not have the same level of knowledge as teammates and may have different requirements for documentation.

It is important to be customer centric, thinking about how services are delivered and communicated with a focus on providing self-serve at the appropriate level for your users and determining what information the business needs for expectation-setting and service level agreements, as well as communications on incidents and changes.

And finally, don’t discount the value of good reporting. There are many reasons to document issues besides just knowing the volume of workload and may become more important as the organization evolves or grows. Stakeholder reporting, regulatory reporting, trend spotting, and staff increases are all good reasons to ensure minimum documentation standards are defined and in use.

Sandi Conrad Principal Research Director Info-Tech Research Group

Table of Contents

Insight summary

Help desk to service desk

Blueprint deliverables

Standard Operating Procedures	Maturity Assessment	Categorization scheme	Improvement Initiative
Create a standard operating procedure to ensure the support team has a consistent understanding of how they need to engage with the business.

Blueprint benefits

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 six to ten calls over the course of three to four months.

The current state discussion will determine the path.

The service desk is the cornerstone for customer satisfaction

N=63, small enterprise organizations from the End-User Satisfaction Diagnostic, at December 2021 Dissatisfied was classified as those organizations with an average score less than 7. Satisfied was classified as those organizations with an average score greater or equal to 8.

End users who were satisfied with service desk effectiveness rated all other IT processes 36% higher than dissatisfied end users. End users who were satisfied with service desk timeliness rated all other IT processes 34% higher than dissatisfied end-users.

Improve the service desk with a Start, Stop, Continue assessment

Complete a maturity assessment to create a baseline and areas of focus

The Service Desk Maturity Assessment tool helps organizations assess their service desk process maturity and focus the project on the activities that matter most. The tool will help guide improvement efforts and measure your progress. The second tab of the tool walks through a qualitative assessment of your service desk practices. Questions will prompt you to evaluate how you are executing key activities. Select the answer in the drop-down menus that most closely aligns with your current state. The third tab displays your rate of process completeness and maturity. You will receive a score for each phase, an overall score, and advice based on your performance. Document the results of the efficiency assessment in the Service Desk Improvement Initiative. The tool is intended for periodic use. Review your answers each year and devise initiatives to improve the process performance where you need it most.

Define your vision for the support structure

Use this vision for communicating with the business and your IT team

Consider service improvements and how those changes can be perceived by the organization. For example, offering multiple platforms, such as adding Macs to end-user devices, could translate to “Providing the right IT solutions for the way our employees want to work.”

Facilitate service desk operations with an ITSM tool

You don’t need to spend a fortune. Many solutions are free or low-cost for a small number of users, and you don’t necessarily have to give up functionality to save money. Encourage users to submit requests through email or self-serve to keep organized. Ensure that reporting will provide you with the basics without effort, but ensure report creation is easy enough if you need to add more. Consider tools that do more than just store tickets. ITSM tools for small enterprises can also assist with: Equipment and software license management Self-serve for password reset and improving the experience for end users to submit tickets Software deployment Onboarding and offboarding workflows Integration with monitoring tools Info-Tech Insight Buying rather than building allows you the greatest flexibility and can provide enterprise-level functionality at small-enterprise pricing. Use Info-Tech’s IT Service Management Selection Guide to create a business case and list of requirements for your ITSM purchase.

Logos contain links

ITSM implementations are the perfect time to fix processes

Define roles looking to balance between customer service and getting things done

First contact – customer service, general knowledge Answers phones, chats, responds to email, troubleshooting, creates knowledge articles for end users. Analyst – experienced troubleshooter, general knowledge Answers phone when FC isn’t available, responds to email, troubleshooting, creates knowledge articles for first contact, escalates to other technicians or vendors. Analyst – experienced troubleshooter, specialist Answers phones only when necessary, troubleshooting, creates knowledge articles for anyone in IT, consults with peers, escalates to vendors. Engineer – deep expertise, specialist Answers phones only when necessary, troubleshooting, creates knowledge articles for anyone in IT, consults with peers, escalates to vendors. Vendor, Managed Service Providers Escalation point per contract terms, must meet SLAs, communicate regularly with analysts and management as appropriate. Who escalates and who manages them?

Note roles in the Incident Management and Service Desk – Standard Operating Procedure Template

Keep customers happy and technicians calm by properly managing your queue

If ticket volume is too high or too dispersed to effectively have teams self-select tickets, assign a queue manager to review tickets throughout the day to ensure they’re assigned and on the technician’s schedule. This is particularly important for technicians who don’t regularly work out of the ticketing system. Follow up on approaching or missed SLAs.

• Separate incidents (break fix) and service requests: Prioritize incidents over service requests to focus on getting users doing business as soon as possible. Schedule service requests for slower times or assign to technicians who are not working the front lines.
• First in/first out…mostly: We typically look to prioritize incidents over service requests and only prioritize incidents if there are multiple people or VIPs affected. Where everything is equal, deal with the oldest first. Pause occasionally to deal with quick wins such as password resets.
• Update ticket status and notes: Knowing what tickets are in progress and which ones are waiting on information or parts is important for anyone looking to pick up the next ticket. Make sure everyone is aware of the benefits of keeping this information up to date, so technicians know what to work on next without duplicating each other’s work.
• Implement solutions quickly by using knowledge articles: Continue to build out the knowledge base to be able to resolve end-user issues quickly, check to see if additional information is needed before escalating tickets to other technicians.
• Encourage end users to create tickets through the portal: Issues called in are automatically moved to the front of the queue, regardless of urgency. Make it easy for users to report issues using the portal and save the phone for urgent issues to allow appropriate prioritization of tickets.
• Create a process to add additional resources on a regular basis to keep control of the backlog: A few extra hours once a week may be enough if the team is focused without interruptions.
• Determine what backlog is acceptable to your users: Set that as a maximum time to resolve. Ideally, set up automated escalations for tickets that are approaching target SLAs, and build flexibility into schedules to have an “all hands on deck” option if the volume gets too high.

Info-Tech Insight

Make sure your queue manager has an accurate escalation list and has the authority to assign tickets and engage with the technical team to manage SLAs; otherwise, SLAs will never be consistently managed.

Best practices for ticket handling

Accurate data leads to good decisions. If working toward adding staff members, reducing recurring incidents, gaining access to better tools, or demonstrating value to the business, tickets will enable reporting and dashboards to manage your day-to-day business and provide reports to stakeholders. Provide an easy way for end users to electronically submit tickets and encourage them to do so. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still accept phone calls, but that should be encouraged for time sensitive issues. Create and update tickets, but not at the expense of good customer service. Agents can start the ticket but shouldn’t spend five minutes creating the ticket when they should be troubleshooting the problem. Update the ticket when the issue is resolved or needs to be escalated. If agents are escalating, they should make sure all relevant information is passed along to the next technician. Update user of ETA if issue cannot be resolved quickly. Update categories to reflect the actual issue and resolution. Reference or link to the knowledge base article as the documented steps taken to resolve the incident. Validate incident is resolved with client. Automate this process with ticket closure after a certain time. Close or resolve the ticket on time.

Ticket templates (or quick tickets) for common incidents can lead to fast creation, data input, and categorizations. Templates can reduce the time it takes to create tickets from two minutes to 30 seconds.

Create a right-sized self-service portal

Review tickets and talk to the team to find out the most frequent requests and the most frequent incidents that could be solved by the end user if there were clear instructions. Check with your user community to see what they would like to see in the portal.

Use customer satisfaction surveys to monitor service levels

Transactional surveys are tied to specific interactions and provide a means of communication to help users communicate satisfaction or dissatisfaction with single interactions. Keep it simple: One question to rate the service with opportunity to add a comment is enough to understand the sentiment and potential issues, and it will be more likely that the user will fill it out. Follow up: Feedback will only be provided if customers think it’s being read and actioned. Set an alert to receive notification of any negative feedback and follow up within one or two business days to show you’re listening.

Relationship surveys can be run annually to obtain feedback on the overall customer experience. Inform yourself of how well you are doing or where you need improvement in the broad services provided. Provide a high-level perspective on the relationship between the business and IT. Help with strategic improvement decisions. Should be sent over a duration of time and to the entire customer base after they’ve had time to experience all the services provided by the service desk. This can be done on an annual basis. For example: Info-Tech’s End User Satisfaction Diagnostic. Included in your membership.

Keep categorizations simple

Asset categorization provides reports that are straightforward and useful for IT and that are typically used where the business isn’t demanding complex reports.

Too many options can cause confusion; too few options provide little value. Try to avoid using “miscellaneous” – it’s not useful information. Test your tickets against your new scheme to make sure it works for you. Effective classification schemes are concise, easy to use correctly, and easy to maintain.

Build out the categories with these questions: What kind of asset am I working on? (type) What general asset group am I working on? (category) What particular asset am I working on? (sub-category) Create resolution codes to further modify the data for deeper reporting. This is typically a separate field, as you could use the same code for many categories. Keep it simple, but make sure it’s descriptive enough to understand the type of work happening in IT. Create and define simple status fields to quickly review tickets and know what needs to be actioned. Don’t stop the clock for any status changes unless you’re waiting on users. The elapsed time is important to measure from a customer satisfaction perspective. Info-Tech Insight Think about how you will use the data to determine which components need to be included in reports. If components won’t be used for reporting, routing, or warranty, reporting down to the component level adds little value.

Need to make quick progress? Use Info-Tech Research Group’s Service Desk Asset-Based Categories template.

1.1 Build or review your categories

Input: Existing tickets

Output: Categorization scheme

Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Markers, Sample categorization scheme

Participants: CIO, Service desk manager, Technicians

Discuss:

• How can you use categories and resolution information to enhance reporting?
• What level of detail do you need to be able to understand the data and take action? What level of detail is too much?
• Are current status fields allowing you to accurately assess pending work at a glance?

Draft:

1. Start with existing categories and review, identifying duplicates and areas of inconsistency.
2. Write out proposed resolution codes and status fields and critically assess their value.
3. Test categories and resolution codes against a few recent tickets.
4. Record the ticket categorization scheme in the Incident Management and Service Desk – Standard Operating Procedure.

Download the Incident Management and Service Desk – Standard Operating Procedure Template

Separate tickets into service requests and incidents

		INCIDENTS	SERVICE REQUESTS
	PRIORITIZATION	Incidents will be prioritized based on urgency and impact to the organization.	Service requests will be scheduled and only increase in prioritization if there is an issue with the request process (e.g. new hire start).
	SLAs	Did incidents get resolved according to prioritization rules? REPONSE & RESOLUTION	Did service requests get completed on time? SCHEDULING & FULFILMENT
	TRIAGE & ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS	Incidents will typically need triage at the service desk unless something is set up to go directly to a specialist.	Service requests don’t need triage and can be routed automatically for approvals and fulfillment.

“For me, the first key question is, is this keeping you from doing business? Is this a service request? Is it actually something that's broken? Well, okay. Now let's have the conversation about what's broken and keeping you from doing business.” (Anonymous CIO)

Determine how service requests will be fulfilled

• Identify standard requests, meaning any product approved for use and deployment in the organization.
• Determine whether this should be published and how. Consider a service catalog with the ability to create tickets right from the request page. If there is an opportunity to automate fulfillment, build that into your workflow and project plans.
• Create workflows for complicated requests such as onboarding, and build them into a template in the service desk tool. This will allow you to reduce the administrative work to deploy tasks.
• Who will fulfill requests? There may be a need for more than one technician to be able to fulfill if volume dictates, but it’s important to determine what will be done by each level to quickly assign those tickets for scheduling. Define what will be done by each group of technicians.
• Determine reasonable SLAs for most service requests. Identify which ones will not meet “normal” SLAs. As you build out a service catalog or automate fulfillment, SLAs can be refined.

Info-Tech Insight

Service requests are not as urgent as incidents and should be scheduled.

Set the SLA based on time to fulfill, plus a buffer to schedule around more urgent service requests.

1.2 Identify service requests and routing needs

2-3 hours

Input: Ticket data, Existing workflow diagrams

Output: Workflow diagrams

Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Markers, Visio

Participants: CIO, Service desk manager, Technicians

Identify:

1. Create your list of typical service requests and identify the best person to fulfill, based on complexity, documentation, specialty, access rights.
2. Review service requests which include multiple people or departments, such as onboarding and offboarding
3. Draw existing processes.
4. Discuss challenges and critique existing process.
5. Document proposed changes and steps that will need to be taken to improve the process.

Download the Incident Management and Service Desk – Standard Operating Procedure Template

Incident management

1.3 Activity: Identify critical systems

1 hour

Input: Ticket data, Business continuity plan

Output: Service desk SOP

Materials: Whiteboard/Flip charts, Markers

Participants: CIO, Service desk manager, Technicians

Discuss and document:

1. Create a list of the most critical systems, and identify and document the escalation path.
2. Review inventory of support documents for critical systems and identify any that require runbooks to ensure quick resolution in the event of an outage or major performance issue. Refer to the blueprint Incident Management for Small Enterprise to prioritize and document runbooks as needed.
3. Review vendor agreements to determine if SLAs are appropriate to support needs. If there is a need for adjustments, determine options for modifying or renegotiating SLAs.

Download the Incident Runbook Prioritization Tool

Prioritization scheme

Focus primarily on incidents. Service requests should always be medium urgency, unless there is a valid reason to move one to high level. Separate major outages from all other tickets as these are a major factor in business impact. Decide how many levels of severity are appropriate for your organization. Build a prioritization matrix, breaking down priority levels by impact and urgency. Build out the definitions of “impact” and “urgency” to complete the prioritization matrix. Run through examples of each priority level to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Document escalation rules and contacts

Depending on the size of the team, escalations may be mostly to internal technical colleagues or could be primarily to vendors.

• Ensure the list of escalation rules and contacts is accurate and available, adding expected SLAs for quick reference
• If tickets are being escalated but shouldn’t be, ensure knowledge articles and training materials are up to date
• Follow up on all external escalations, ensuring SLAs are respected
• Publish an escalation path for clients if service is not meeting their needs (for internal and external providers) and automate escalations for tickets breaching SLAs

User doesn’t know who will fix the issue but expects to see it done in a reasonable time.	If issue cannot be resolved right away, set expectations for resolution time. Document information so next technician doesn’t need to ask the same questions. Escalate to the right technician the first time.	Check notes to catch up on the issue. Run tests if necessary. Contact user to troubleshoot and fix. Meet SLAs or update client on new ETA. Provide complete information to vendor. Monitor resolution. Follow up with vendor if delays. Update client as needed.	Vendor will provide support according to agreement. Encourage vendor to provide regular updates to IT. Review vendor performance regularly. IT will validate issue is resolved and close ticket.	Validate user is happy with the experience

Define, measure, and report on service level agreements

Determine what communications are most important and who will do them

	PROACTIVE, PLANNED CHANGES	From: Service Desk Messaging provided by engineer or director, sent to all employees; proactive planning with business unit leaders.
	OUTAGES & UPDATES	From: Service Desk Use templates to send out concise messaging and updates hourly, with input from technical team working on restoring services to all; director to liaise with business stakeholders.
	UPDATES TO SERVICES, SELF-SERVE	From: Director Send announcements no more than monthly about new services and processes.
	REGULAR STAKEHOLDER COMMUNICATIONS	From: Director Monthly reporting to business and IT stakeholders on strategic and project goals, manage escalations.

1.4 Create communications plan

2 hours

Input: Sample past communications

Output: Communications templates

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Markers

Participants: CIO, Service desk manager, Technicians

Determine where templates are needed to ensure quick and consistent communications. Review sample templates and modify to suit your needs:

1. Proactive, planned changes
2. Outages and updates
3. Updates to services, self-serve
4. Regular stakeholder communications

Download the communications templates

What else can you do to improve service?

Review the next few pages to see if you need additional blueprints to help you:

• Evaluate staffing and training needs to ensure the right number of resources are available and they have the skills they need for your environment.
• Create self-service for end users to get quick answers and create tickets.
• Create a knowledge base to ensure backup for technical expertise.
• Develop customer service skills through training.
• Perform ticket analysis to better understand your technical environment.

Create your roadmap with high-level requirements

Determine what tasks and projects need to be completed to meet your improvement goals. Create a high-level project plan and balance with existing resources.

Bibliography

Taylor, Sharon and Ivor Macfarlane. ITIL Small Scale Implementation. Office of Government Commerce, 2005.

“Share, Collaborate, and Communicate on One Consistent Platform.” Liferay, n.d. Accessed 19 July 2022.

Rodela, Jimmy. “A Beginner’s Guide to Customer Self-Service.” The Ascent, 18 May 2022. Web.

Take Advantage of Big Tech Layoffs

Simple tactics to secure the right talent in times of economic uncertainty.

Why are the layoffs making the news?

After three years of record low unemployment rates in IT and organizations struggling to hire IT talent into their organization, the window appears to be opening with tens of thousands layoffs from Big Tech employers.

Big brand organizations such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix, and Meta have been hitting major newswires, but these layoffs aren't exclusive to the big names. We've also seen smaller high-growth tech organizations following suit. In fact, in 2022, it's estimated that there were more than 160,997 layoffs across over 1,045 tech organizations. This trend has continued into 2023. By mid-February 2023, there were already 108,754 employees laid off at 385 tech companies (Layoffs.fyi).(1)

While some of these layoffs have been openly connected to economic slowdown, others are pointing to the layoffs being a correction for over-hiring during the pandemic. It is also important to note that many of these workers were not IT employees, as these organizations also saw cuts across other areas of the business such as sales, marketing, recruitment, and operations.

(1)This global database is constantly being updated, and these numbers are changing on an ongoing basis. For up-to-date statistics, see https://layoffs.fyi

While tech layoffs have been making the news, so far many of these layoffs have been a correction to over-hiring, with most employees laid off finding work, if they want it, within three months.

IT leaders need to determine their response – wait and see the impact of the recession on budgets and candidate expectations or dive in and secure great talent to execute today on strategic needs.

This research is designed to help IT leaders understand the talent market and provide winning strategies to those looking to take advantage of the layoffs to fill their hiring needs.

Three key drivers for Big Tech layoffs

Economic uncertainty

Globally, economists are predicting an economic slowdown, though there is not a consistent prediction on the impact. We have seen an increase in interest rates and inflation, as well as reduced investment budgets.

Over-hiring during the pandemic

High growth and demand for digital technologies and services during the early pandemic led to over-hiring in the tech industry. Many organizations overestimated the future demand and had to rebalance staffing as a result.

New automation investments

Many tech organizations that have conducted layoffs are still in a growth mindset. This is demonstrated though new tech investments by these companies in products like chatbots and RPA to semi-automate processes to reduce the need for certain roles.

Despite layoffs, the labor market remains competitive

There were at least 160,997 layoffs from more than 1,045 tech companies last year (2022). (Layoffs.fyi reported as of Feb 21/2023)

But just because Big Tech is laying people off doesn't mean the IT job market has cooled.

Between January and October 2022 technology- focused job postings rose 25% compared to the same period in 2021, and there were more than 375,000 tech jobs posted in October of 2022.
(Dice: Tech Jobs Report.)

Info-Tech Insight

The "where has the talent gone?" puzzle has been solved. Many tech firms over-hired and were able to outcompete everyone, but it wasn't sustainable. This correction won't impact unemployment numbers in the short term – the job force is just in flux right now.

So far, many of the layoffs have been a market correction

Tech Layoffs Since COVID-19

Source: Layoffs.fyi - Tech Layoff Tracker and Startup Layoff Lists

Tech Companies Layoffs vs. Early Pandemic Hiring # of People

Source: Yahoo Finance. Q4 '19 to Q3 '22

Tech Layoffs between 2020 Q3- 2022 Q1 remained very low across the sector. In fact, outside of the initial increase at the start of the pandemic, layoffs have remained at historic low levels of around 1% (HBR, 2023). While the layoffs look significant in isolation, when you compare these numbers to pandemic hiring and growth for these organizations, the figures are relatively small.

The first question IT leaders need to ask is whether now is the time to act

The big gamble many CIOs face is whether to strike now to secure talent or to wait to better understand the impact of the recession. While two-thirds of IT professionals are still expecting their budgets to increase in 2023, CIOs must account for the impact of inflation and the recession on their IT budgets and staffing decisions (see Info-Tech's CEO-CIO Alignment Program).

Ultimately, while unemployment is low today, it's common to see unemployment numbers drop right before a recession. If that is the case, then we will see more talent entering the market, possibly at more competitive salaries. But organizations that wait to hire risk not having the staff they need to execute on their strategy and finding themselves in a hiring freeze. CIOs need to decide on how to approach the economic uncertainty and where to place their bets.

Looking ahead to 2023, how do you anticipate your IT spending will change compared to spending in 2022?

Info-Tech's CEO-CIO Alignment Program

Organizations ready to take advantage will need to act fast when layoffs happen

Organizations looking to fill hiring needs or grow their IT/digital organization will need to be strategic and efficient when it comes to recruitment. Regardless of the number of layoffs, it continues to be an employee market when it comes to IT roles.

While it is likely that the recession will impact unemployment rates, so far, the market remains hot, and the number of open roles continues to grow. This means that organizations that want to take advantage need to act quickly when news hits.

Leaders not only need to compete with other organizations for talent, but the other challenge hiring organizations will need to compete with is that many in tech received generous severance packages and will be considering taking time off. To take advantage, leaders need to establish a plan and a clear employee value proposition to entice these highly skilled workers to get off the bench.

Why you need to act fast:

• Unemployment rates remain low:
  • Tech unemployment's rates in the US dropped to 1.5% in January 2023 (CompTIA), compared to overall unemployment which is at 3.4% in the US as of January 2023 (Yahoo Finance). While the layoffs look significant, we can see that many workers have been rehired into the labor market.
• Long time-to-hire results in lost candidates:
  • According to Info-Tech's IT Talent Trend Report, 58% of IT leaders report time-to-hire is longer than two months. This timing increases for tech roles which require unique skills or higher seniority. IT leaders who can increase the timeline for their requirement process are much more likely to be able to take advantage of tech layoffs.

IT must take a leading role in IT recruitment to take advantage of layoffs

A personal connection is the differentiator when it comes to talent acquisition

There is a statistically significant relationship between IT leadership involvement in talent acquisition and the effectiveness of this process in the IT department. The more involved they are, the higher the effectiveness.(1)

More IT leadership involvement

Higher recruitment effectiveness

Involved leaders see shorter times to hire

There is a statistically significant relationship between IT leadership involvement in the talent acquisition process and time to fill vacant positions. The more involved they are, the shorter the time to hire.(2)

Involved leaders are an integral part of effective IT departments

There is a statistically significant relationship between IT leadership involvement in talent acquisition and overall IT department effectiveness. Those that are more involved have higher levels of effectiveness.(3)

Increased IT Leadership in Recruitment Is Directly Correlated to Recruitment Effectiveness.

Focus your layoff recruitment strategy on critical and strategic roles

If you are ready to take advantage of tech layoffs, focus hiring on critical and strategic roles, rather than your operational backfills. Roles related to security, cloud migration, data and analytics, and digital transformation are more likely to be shielded from budget cuts and are logical areas to focus on when looking to recruit from Big Tech organizations.

Additionally, within the IT talent market, scarcity is focused in areas with specialized skill sets, such as security and architecture, which are dynamic and evolving faster than other skill sets. When looking to recruit in these areas, it's critical that you have a targeted recruitment approach; this is why tech layoffs represent a strong opportunity to secure talent in these specialized areas.

ROLES DIFFICULT TO FILL

Info-Tech Talent Trends 2022 Survey

Four quick tactics to take advantage of Big Tech layoffs

TALENT ACQUISITION PROCESS TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF LAYOFFS

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 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Tactics to take advantage of tech layoffs

Activities

1.1 Spot check your employee value proposition
1.2 Update job advertisements
1.3 Document your talent acquisition process
1.4 Refine your talent acquisition process

This step involves the following participants:

• IT executive leadership
• IT hiring manager
• Human resources
• Marketing/public relations

Outcomes of this step

Streamlined talent acquisition process tailored to take advantage of tech layoffs.

Requisition: update job ads and secure approval to hire

Critical steps:

1. Ensure you have secured budget and hiring approval.
2. Identify an IT recruitment partner within the IT organization who will be accountable for working with HR throughout the process and who will actively track and scan for recruitment opportunities.
3. Update your IT job descriptions.
4. Spot check your employee value proposition (EVP) to appeal to targeted candidates (Exercise 1.1).
5. Write employee job ads for relevant skills and minimum viable experience (Exercise 1.2).
6. Work with HR to develop your candidate outreach messages – ensure that your outreach is empathetic, aligns with your EVP, and focuses on welcoming them to apply to a role.

The approval process to activate a requisition can be one of the longest stages in the talent acquisition process. Ensure all your roles are up to date and approved so you can trigger outreach as soon as news hits; otherwise, you'll be late before you've even begun.

Your employee value proposition (EVP) is a key tool for attracting and retaining talent

Any updates to your EVP need to be a genuine reflection of the employee experience at your organization – and should resonate internally and externally.

Internal (retention) perspective: These characteristics help to retain new and existing talent by ensuring that new hires' expectations are met and that the EVP is experienced throughout the organization.

External (attraction) perspective: These characteristics help to attract talent and are targeted so the right candidates are motivated to join, while those who aren't a good fit will self-select out.

McLean & Company's Employee Value Proposition Framework

Source: McLean & Company

1.1 Spot check your EVP

1-3 hours

1. Review your existing IT employee value proposition. If you do not have an EVP, see Info-Tech's comprehensive research Improve the IT Recruitment Process to draft a new EVP.
2. Invite a representative group of employees to participate in a working group to improve your employee value proposition. Ask each participant to brainstorm the top five things they value most about working at the organization.
3. Consider the following categories: work environment, career advancement, benefits, and ESG and diversity impact. Brainstorm as a group if there is anything unique your organization offers with regard to these categories.
4. Compare your notes to your existing EVP, identify up to four key statements to focus on for the EVP, ensuring that your EVP speaks to at least one of the categories above. Remove any statements that no longer speak to who you are as an organization or what you offer.

Input

• Existing employee value proposition
• Employee Engagement Surveys (If Available)

Output

• Updated employee value proposition

Materials

• Whiteboard/flip charts
• Job ad template

Participants

• Representative group of internal employees.
• HR
• Marketing/PR (if possible)

Four critical factors considered by today's job seeker

1. Be specific about remote work policies: Include verbiage about whether there is an option to work hybrid or remote. 81% of job seekers stated that whether a job is remote, hybrid, or in-person was a top factor in whether they'd accept an offer (Benefits Canada, 2022).
2. Career advancement and stability: "37% of Gen Z employees and 25% of millennial employees are currently looking for a job that offers career progression transparency — or, in other words, a job with clear opportunities for growth. This is significantly higher than our findings for older generations Gen X (18%) and baby boomers (7%)," (Lattice, 2021).
3. Unique benefits: Consider your unique benefits – it's not the Big Tech "fun perks" like slides and ping pong that drive interest. Employees are increasingly looking for roles with long-term benefits programs. 90% of job seekers consider higher pension contributions to be a key factor, and 85% are considering bonuses/profit sharing" (Benefits Canada, 2022). Candidates may accept lower total compensation in exchange for flexibility, culture, work/life balance that was lacking in the start-up scene or the mega-vendors' fast-paced world.
4. ESG and diversity impact: Include details of how the candidate will make a societal impact through their role, and how the company is acting on climate and sustainability. "Nearly two in five [Gen Z's and millennials] say they have rejected a job or assignment because it did not align with their values," (Deloitte Global, 2022).

Update or establish job ads for candidate outreach

Take the time up front to update your IT job descriptions and to write effective job advertisements. A job advertisement is an external-facing document that advertises a position with the intent of attracting job applicants. It contains key elements from the job description as well as information on the organization and its EVP. A job description informs a job ad, it doesn't replace it.
When updating job descriptions and job ads, it's critical that your requirements are an accurate representation of what you need in the position. For the job ads especially, focus on the minimum requirements for the role, highlight your employee value proposition, and ensure that they are using inclusive language.
Don't be lulled into using a job description as a posting when there's a time crunch to fill a position – use your preparation time to complete this key step.

Three tips to consider when building a job ad

Include the minimum desired requirements

Include the required skills, responsibilities, and certifications required. Instead of looking for a unicorn, look for what you need and a demonstrated ability to learn. 70% of business executives say they are getting creative about sourcing for skills rather than just considering job experience (Deloitte Insights, 2022).

Strategically include certifications

When including certifications, ensure you have validated the process to be certified – i.e. if you are hiring for a role with 3-5 years' experience, ensure that the certification does not take 5-10 years of experience be eligible.

Use inclusive language

Consider having a review group within your IT organization to ensure the language is inclusive, that the responsibilities don't read as overly complex, and that it is an accurate representation of the organization's culture.

1.2 Update or build job ads

1-3 hours

1. Begin with a copy of the job ad you are looking to fill, if you haven't begun to draft the role, start with Info-Tech's Job Description Library and Info-Tech's Job Ad Template.
2. Review the job accountabilities, rank each responsibility based on its importance and volume of work. Determine if there are any responsibilities that are uncommon to be executed by the role and remove unnecessary responsibilities.
3. For each of the job accountabilities, identify if there is a level of experience, knowledge or competency that would be the minimum bar for a candidate. Remove technical skills, specific technologies, and competencies that aren't directly relevant to the role, responsibilities or values.
4. Review the education and requirements, and ensure that any certification or educational background is truly needed or suggested.
5. Use the checklist on the following tab to review and update your job ad.

Input

• Job description
• Employee value proposition
• Job ad template

Output

• Completed job ad

Materials

• Whiteboard/flip charts
• Web share

Participants

• Representative group of internal employees.
• HR
• Marketing/PR (if possible)

1.2 Job ad checklist:

A job ad needs to be two things: effective and inclusive.

Sourcing: Set up news trackers and review layoff source lists

• Set up news and social media trackers to track layoff updates, and ensure you have an IT staff member on standby to complete a more detailed opportunity analysis when layoffs happen.
• Use layoff source lists such as Layoffs.fyi to actively track organizations that have laid people off, noting the industry, location, and numbers in order to identify potential candidates. Limit your future analysis to locations that would be geographically possible to hire from.
• Review open-source lists of laid-off employees to quickly identify potential candidates for your organization.
• Many organizations that have completed layoffs have established outplacement programs to help laid-off staff find new roles. Set a plan in motion with HR to reach out to organizations once a layoff has occurred to understand their layoff support program.

The key to successful sourcing is for IT to take an active role in identifying which organizations impacted by layoffs would be a good fit, and to quickly respond by searching open-source lists and LinkedIn to reach out potential candidates.

Consider leveraging open-source lists

Layoffs.fyi has been tracking and reporting on layoffs since the start of COVID-19. While they are not an official source of information, the site has more than a million views per month and is a strong starting point for IT leaders looking to source candidates from tech layoffs beyond the big organizations that are making the news.

The site offers a view of companies with layoffs by location, industry, and the source of the info. Additionally, it often lists the names and contact information of laid-off employees, which you can leverage to start your deeper LinkedIn outreach or candidate screening.

Screenshots from Layoffs.fyi.

Screening: Prioritize by considering salary benchmarks and keywords

• Determine a set of consistent pre-screening questions to leverage while screening candidates, which every candidate must answer, including knockout questions.
• Prioritize by going for salary ranges you can afford: It is important to be aware of what companies are paying within the tech arena, so you know if your salary bands are within a competitive range.
• Pre-screen resumes using appropriate keywords that are critical for the role, and widen the terms if you do not have enough candidates. Given the pool you are looking to recruit from, consider removing criteria specifically related to education or certifications; instead, prioritize skills and on-the-job experience.

Screening is one of the most time-consuming stages of the TA process. For each open position, it can take 23 hours to screen resumes (Toolbox, 2021). In fact, 52% of TA leaders believe that screening candidates from a large pool of applicants is the hardest part of recruitment (Ideal, 2021).

Compensation comparison reports

Keep in mind that the market may be shifting rapidly as layoffs proliferate, so what the data shows, particularly on free-to-use sites with little data-checking, may not be current and may be overstated. Info-Tech does not provide salary analysis; however, there are publicly available reports and online websites with self-reported data.

This list contains several market data sources for the tech industry, which may be a good starting point for comparison. Info-Tech is not affiliated with or endorsing any of these market data sources.

Work with your HR partner to streamline your talent acquisition process

A slow talent acquisition process presents multiple risks to your ability to recruit. Candidates are likely having multiple hiring conversations, and you could lose a good candidate just by being slower than another organization. Additionally, long hiring processes are also an indicator of a high level of bureaucracy in an organization, which may turn off tech candidates who are used to faster-paced decision making.

Reducing your time-to-hire needs to be a strategic priority, and companies that manage to do this are reaping the benefits: There is a statistically significant relationship between time to fill vacant positions and overall IT department effectiveness. The shorter the time to fill a position, the higher the effectiveness (Bika, 2019).

Key Considerations for Optimizing your Talent Acquisition Process

Time to hire: Identify solutions to drive efficient hiring

1. Document all steps between screening and hiring and remove any unnecessary steps.
2. Create clearly defined interview guides to ensure consistent questioning by interviewers.
3. Enable hiring managers to schedule their own interviews.
4. Determine who needs to approve an offer. Streamline the number of approvals, if possible.
5. Eliminate unnecessary background checks. Many companies have eliminated reference checks, for example, after determining that it was it was not adding value to their decision.
6. Identify and track key metrics across your talent acquisition process.

It is critical to partner with your HR department on optimizing this process, as they are typically the process owners and will have deep knowledge of the rationale for decisions. Together, you can identify some opportunities to streamline the process and improve the time to hire.

4.1 Document your TA process

1-3 hours

1. If you have a documented talent acquisition process, begin with that; if not, open the IT Talent Acquisition Process Optimization Tool and map the stages of the talent acquisition process with your HR leader. Stages are the top level in the process (e.g. requisition, sourcing, screening).
2. Identify all the stakeholders involved in IT talent acquisition and document these in the tool.
3. Next, identify the steps required for each stage. These are more detailed actions that together will complete the stage (e.g. enter requisition into ATS, intake meeting). Ask subject matter experts to add steps to their portion of the process and document these in the cells.
4. For each step in the stage, record the time required and the number of people who are involved.

Input

• Existing talent acquisition (TA) process document
• Any TA process metrics
• Info-Tech's Talent Acquisition Process Optimization Tool

Output

• Documented TA process

Materials

• Info-Tech's Talent Acquisition Process Optimization Tool
• Whiteboard/flip charts
• Sticky notes

Participants

• HR
• IT leaders
• Hiring manager

Download the IT Talent Acquisition Process Optimization Tool

Example of steps in each stage of the TA process

4.2 Refine your TA process

1-3 hours

1. Collectively identify any:
1. Inconsistent applications: Activities that are done differently by different participants.
2. Bottlenecks: A place in the process where activity is constrained and holds up next steps.
3. Errors: When a mistake occurs requiring extra time, resources, or rework.
4. Lack of value: An activity that adds little to no value (often a legacy activity).
2. Work with HR to identify any proposed solutions to improve consistency, reduce bottlenecks, errors, or eliminate steps that lack value. Document your proposed solutions in tab 3 of the IT Talent Acquisition Optimization Tool.
3. Identify any new steps needed that would drive greater efficiency, including the tactics suggested in this research. Document any proposed solutions in tab 3.
4. For each proposed solution, evaluate the general level of effort and impact required to move forward with that solution and select the appropriate classification from the drop-down.
5. Determine if you will move forward with the proposed solution at this time. Update the TA workflow with your decisions.

Input

• Existing talent acquisition (TA) process document
• Any TA process metrics
• Info-Tech's Talent Acquisition Process Optimization Tool

Output

• Documented TA process

Materials

• Info-Tech's Talent Acquisition Process Optimization Tool
• Whiteboard/flip charts
• Sticky notes

Participants

• HR
• IT leaders
• Hiring manager

Use Info-Tech's IT Talent Acquisition Optimization Tool to document current challenges & target solutions.

Map your process and identify opportunities to streamline

Brainstorm and select solutions to improve your process

Key considerations when optimizing your process

• Put yourself in each stakeholder's shoes (candidate, HR, hiring manager). Think through what they need from the process.
• Challenge assumptions and norms. It can be tempting to get caught up in "how we do it today." Think beyond how it is today.
• Question timing of activities and events. Identify if they are occurring when they need to.
• Rebalance work to align with priorities. Identify if work can be redistributed or condensed to use time more efficiently.
• Distinguish when consistency will add value and when there should be process flexibility.
• Question the value. For each activity, ask "What value does this activity add?"

Select metrics to measure Talent Acquisition process improvement

Bibliography

"81% of Employees Factoring Hybrid Work Into Job Search: Survey." BenefitsCanada.com, 16 June 2022.
Andre, Louie. "40 Notable Candidate Experience Statistics: 2023 Job Application Trends & Challenges." Financesonline.Com, 15 Mar. 2023.
Bika, Nikoletta. "Key Hiring Metrics: Useful Benchmarks for Tech Roles." Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better, 10 Jan. 2019.
"Bureau of Labor Statistics Labor Market Revisions Contribute to Conflicting Signals in Latest Tech Employment Data, CompTIA Analysis Finds." CompTIA, 3 Feb. 2023. Press release.
Byrnes, Amy. "ICIMS Insights Workforce Report: Time to Press the Reset Button?" ICIMS | The Leading Cloud Recruiting Software, 1 Dec. 2022.
Cantrell, Sue, et al. "The Skills-Based Organization: A New Operating Model for Work and the Workforce." Deloitte Insights, 8 Sept. 2022.
deBara, Deanna. "Top Findings from Lattice's Career Progression Survey." Lattice, 13 Sept. 2021. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
Duszyński, Maciej. "Candidate Experience Statistics (Survey of 1,000+ Americans)." Zety, 14 Oct. 2019.
Duszyński, Maciej. "Candidate Experience Statistics." Zety, 2021.
Echevarria, Desiree. "2020 Candidate Experience Report." Career Plug, 17 Mar. 2021.
Ghosh, Prarthana. "Candidate Screening and Selection Process: The Complete Guide for 2021." Spiceworks, 26 Feb. 2021. Accessed 22 Jun. 2021
"Introduction - Dice Tech Job Report: Tech Hiring Trends by Location, Industry, Role and Skill." Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
Lee, Roger. "Tech Layoff Tracker and Startup Layoff Lists." Layoffs.fyi. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
Miller, Kandace. "Candidate Experience And Engagement Metrics You Should Be Tracking." ConveyIQ, n.d. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
Min, Ji-A. "Resume Screening: A How-To Guide for Recruiters." Ideal, 15 Mar. 2021. Web.
Palmeri, Shelby. "2023 Candidate Experience Research: Strategies for Recruiting." CareerPlug, 6 Feb. 2023.
Semenova, Alexandra. "Jobs Report: U.S. Economy Adds 517,000 Jobs in January, Unemployment Rate Falls to 3.4% as Labor Market Stuns." Yahoo!Finance, 3 Feb. 2023.
Sozzi, Brian. "Big Tech Layoffs: What Companies Such as Amazon and Meta Have in Common." Yahoo!News, 6 Feb. 2023.
Tarki, Atta. "Despite Layoffs, It's Still a Workers' Labor Market." Harvard Business Review, 30 Jan. 2023.
The Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. Deloitte Global, 2022. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
"Uncover the Employee Value Proposition." McLean & Company, 21 Jun. 2022. Accessed 22 Feb. 2023.

z/Series Modernization and Migration

The biggest migration is yet to come.

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

“A number of market conditions have coalesced in a way that is increasingly driving existing mainframe customers to consider running their application workloads on alternative platforms. In 2020, the World Economic Forum noted that 42% of core skills required to perform existing jobs are expected to change by 2022, and that more than 1 billion workers need to be reskilled by 2030.” – Dale Vecchio

Review

We help IT leaders make the most of their z/Series environment

Analyst Perspective

Good Luck.

Modernize the mainframe … here we go again. Prior to 2020, most organizations were muddling around in “year eleven of the four-year plan” to exit the mainframe platform where a medium-term commitment to the platform existed. Since 2020, it appears the appetite for the mainframe platform changed. Again. Discussions mostly seem to be about what the options are beyond hardware outsourcing or re-platforming to “cloud” migration of workloads – mostly planning and strategy topics. A word of caution: it would appear unwise to stand in front of the exit door for fear of being trampled. Hardware expirations between now and 2025 are motivating hosting deployments. Others are in migration activities, and some have already decommissioned and migrated but now are trying to rehab the operations team now lacking direction and/or structure. There is little doubt that modernization and “digital transformation” trends will drive more exit traffic, so IT leaders who are still under pressure to get off the platform need to assess their options and decide. Being in a state of perpetually planning to get off the mainframe handcuffs your ability to invest in the mainframe, address deficiencies, and improve cost-effectiveness.

Darin Stahl Principal Research Advisor, Infrastructure & Operations Research Info-Tech Research Group

The mainframe “fidget spinner”

Thinking of modernizing your mainframe can cause you angst so grab a fidget spinner and relax because we have you covered!

External Business Pressures:

• Digital transformation
• Modernization programs
• Compliance and regulations
• TCO

Internal Considerations:

• Reinvest
• Migrate to a new platform
• Evaluate public and vendor cloud alternatives
• Hosting versus infrastructure outsourcing

Info-Tech Insight

With multiple control points to be addressed, care must be taken to simplify your options while addressing all concerns to ease operational load.

The analyst call review

“Who has Darin talked with?” – Troy Cheeseman

Scale out versus scale up

Consider your resourcing

Understand your options

Migrate

Having perpetual plans to migrate handcuffs your ability to invest in your mainframe, extend its value, and improve cost effectiveness.

Hosting

Using a hosting provider is typically more cost-effective than running your mainframe in-house.

Potential for reduced costs

• Hosting enables you to reduce or eliminate your mainframe staff.
• Economies of scale enable hosting providers to reduce software licensing costs. They also have more buying power to negotiate better terms.
• Power and cooling costs are also transferred to the hosting provider.

Reliable infrastructure and experienced staff

• A quality hosting provider will have 24/7 monitoring, full redundancy, and proven disaster recovery capabilities.
• The hosting provider will also have a larger mainframe staff, so they don’t have the same risk of suddenly being without those advanced critical skills.

So, what are the risks?

• A transition to a hosting provider usually means eliminating or significantly reducing your in-house mainframe staff. With that loss of in-house expertise, it will be next to impossible to bring the mainframe back in-house, and you become highly dependent on your hosting provider.

Outsourcing

Re-platform – z/Series COBOL Cloud

Re-platforming is not trivial.

Re-platform – z/Series (Non-COBOL)

But what if it's not COBOL?

Reinvest

By contrast, reducing the use of your mainframe makes it less cost-effective and more challenging to retain in-house expertise.

• For organizations that have migrated applications off the mainframe (at least partly to reduce dependency on the platform), inevitably there remains a core set of mission critical applications that cannot be moved off for reasons described on the “Migrate” slide. This is when the mainframe becomes a costly burden:
  • TCO is relatively high due to low utilization.
  • In-house expertise declines as workload declines and current staffing allocations become harder to justify.
• Organizations that are instead adding capacity and finding new ways to use this platform have lower cost concerns and resourcing challenges. The charts below illustrate this correlation. While some capacity growth is due to normal business growth, some is also due to new workloads, and it reflects an ongoing commitment to the platform.

*92% of organizations that added capacity said TCO is lower than for commodity servers (compared to 50% of those who did not add capacity)	*63% of organizations that added capacity said finding resources is not very difficult (compared to 42% of those who did not add capacity)

*Maximize the Value of IBM Mainframes in My Business

An important thought about data migration

Mainframe data migrations – “VSAM, IMS, etc.”

Enterprise class job scheduling

Job scheduling or data center automation?

• Enterprise class job scheduling solutions enable complex unattended batched programmatically conditioned task/job scheduling.
• Data center automation (DCIM) software automates and orchestrates the processes and workflow for infrastructure operations including provisioning, configuring, patching of physical, virtual, and cloud servers, and monitoring of tasks involved in maintaining the operations of a data center or Infrastructure environment.
• While there maybe some overlap and or confusion between data center automation and enterprise class job scheduling solutions, data center automation (DCIM) software solutions are least likely to have support for non-commodity server platforms and lack robust scheduling functionality.

Note: Enterprise job scheduling is a topic with low member interest or demand. Since our published research is driven by members’ interest and needs, the lack of activity or member demand would obviously be a significant influence into our ability to aggregate shared member insight, trends, or best practices in our published agenda.

Data Center Automation (DCIM) Software

Orchestration/Provisioning Software

Enterprise class job scheduling features

The feature set for these tools is long and comprehensive. The feature list below is not exhaustive as specific tools may have additional product capabilities. At a minimum, the solutions offered by the vendors in the list below will have the following capabilities:

Understand your vendors and tools

List and compare the job scheduling features of each vendor.

• This is not presented as an exhaustive list.
• The list relies on observations aggregated from analyst engagements with Info-Tech Research Group members. Those member discussions tend to be heavily tilted toward solutions supporting non-commodity platforms.
• Nothing is implied about a solution suitability or capability by the order of presentation or inclusion or absence in this list.

Info-Tech Insight

Creating vendor profiles will help quickly filter the solution providers that directly meet your z/Series needs.

Advanced Systems Concepts

ActiveBatch

*Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc.

BMC

Control-M

*BMC

Broadcom

Atomic Automation

Autosys Workload Automation

*Broadcom

HCL

Workload Automation

*HCL Software

Fortra

JAMS Scheduler

*JAMS

Redwood

Redwood SaaS

*Redwood

Fortra

Robot Scheduler

*Fortra

SMA Technologies

OpCon

*SMA Technologies

StoneBranch

Universal Automation Center (UAC)

*Stonebranch

Tidal Software

Workload Automation

*Tidal

Vinzant Software

Global ECS

*Vizant Software

Activity

Scale Out or Scale Up

Activities:

1. Complete the Scale Up vs. Scale Out TCO Tool.
2. Compare total lifecycle costs to determine TCO.

This activity involves the following participants:

IT strategic direction decision makers

IT managers responsible for an existing z/Series platform

Organizations evaluating platforms for mission critical applications

Outcomes of this step:

• Completed Scale Up vs. Scale Out TCO Tool

Info-Tech Insight

This checkpoint process creates transparency around agreement costs with the business and gives the business an opportunity to re-evaluate its requirements for a potentially leaner agreement.

Scale out versus scale up activity

The Scale Up vs. Scale Out TCO Tool provides organizations with a framework for estimating the costs associated with purchasing and licensing for a scale-up and scale-out environment over a multi-year period. Use this tool to: Compare the pre-populated values. Insert your own amounts to contrast possible database decisions and determine the TCO of each.
Info-Tech Insight Watch out for inaccurate financial information. Ensure that the financials for cost match your maintenance and contract terms.	Use the Scale Up vs. Scale Out TCO Tool to determine your TCO options.

Related Info-Tech Research

Effectively Acquire Infrastructure Services

Acquiring a service is like buying an experience. Don’t confuse the simplicity of buying hardware with buying an experience.

Outsource IT Infrastructure to Improve System Availability, Reliability, and Recovery

There are very few IT infrastructure components you should be housing internally – outsource everything else.

Build Your Infrastructure Roadmap

Move beyond alignment: Put yourself in the driver’s seat for true business value.

Define Your Cloud Vision

Make the most of cloud for your organization.

Document Your Cloud Strategy

Drive consensus by outlining how your organization will use the cloud.

Build a Strategy for Big Data Platforms

Know where to start and where to focus attention in the implementation of a big data strategy.

Create a Better RFP Process

Improve your RFPs to gain leverage and get better results.

Research Authors

Darin Stahl, Principal Research Advisor, Info-Tech Research Group Darin is a Principal Research Advisor within the Infrastructure Practice, and leveraging 38+ years of experience, his areas of focus include: IT Operations Management, Service Desk, Infrastructure Outsourcing, Managed Services, Cloud Infrastructure, DRP/BCP, Printer Management, Managed Print Services, Application Performance Monitoring/ APM, Managed FTP, non-commodity servers (z/Series, mainframe, IBM i, AIX, Power PC).

Troy Cheeseman, Practice Lead, Info-Tech Research Group Troy has over 25 years of IT management experience and has championed large enterprise-wide technology transformation programs, remote/home office collaboration and remote work strategies, BCP, IT DRP, IT Operations and expense management programs, international right placement initiatives, and large technology transformation initiatives (M&A). Additionally, he has deep experience working with IT solution providers and technology (cloud) start-ups.

Bibliography

“AWS Announces AWS Mainframe Modernization.” Business Wire, 30 Nov. 2021.
de Valence, Phil. “Migrating a Mainframe to AWS in 5 Steps with Astadia?” AWS, 23 Mar. 2018.
Graham, Nyela. “New study shows mainframes still popular despite the rise of cloud—though times are changing…fast?” WatersTechnology, 12 Sept. 2022.
“Legacy applications can be revitalized with API.” MuleSoft, 2022.
Vecchio, Dale. “The Benefits of Running Mainframe Applications on LzLabs Software Defined Mainframe® & Microsoft Azure.” LzLabs Sites, Mar. 2021.

Establish Effective Data Stewardship

Leverage your organization's business subject matter experts to drive impactful data use and handling.

Analyst perspective

Leverage your organization's business subject matter experts to drive impactful data use and handling.

Data stewards bring valuable expertise and knowledge about their business areas: priorities, business capabilities and processes, and challenges and opportunities with respect to data. Because this knowledge cannot be easily replicated, going outside your organization to hire a data steward is not the most effective route.

While it may seem difficult, organizing internally to harvest the already existing institutional knowledge of your business subject matter experts (SMEs) will give a better – and faster – return when setting up and formalizing data stewardship.

The role must be well defined and communicated. We cannot expect SMEs to wear a hat without understanding the expectations for their role. They must be set up for success – they must be empowered, recognized, and rewarded.

Crystal Singh
Director, Research and Advisory, Data and Analytics Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Phase breakdown

Phase 1: Data Stewardship Value Proposition

• Define the value of data stewardship and data governance, their importance, and the relationship between them.
• Determine where data stewards fit in the bigger data governance operating structure. The data steward role will not be effective without the other data governance roles.
• Highlight the gains of effective data stewardship: e.g. data quality management, data definition, data sharing, and the ethical use and handling of data.

Phase breakdown

Phase 2: Data Steward Role Design

• Who makes a good data steward? Important knowledge and skills include subject area expertise, institutional knowledge, collaborative skills, interpersonal, and political skills, an understanding of your organization's culture, and the ability to build good partnerships across business functions and with data management.
• Seek out SMEs from within your organization. This may require you to mold and shape individuals to step up and into the role. An external hire will give capacity but will be more difficult (and time consuming) to ramp up.
• Consult internally in your organization. For example, consult and liaise with Human Resources (HR) to determine if job descriptions need to be updated, if there would be any impact to compensation, etc.
• Determine if this role needs to be a full-time role.
• Demystify the role. Clarify that this is not an IT role and therefore will not require IT skills.
• Leverage Info-Tech data governance patterns:
  • Data Stewardship in Action – Sample Data Quality Issue Resolution Process Template and Business Term and Data Definitions
  • Sample Data Steward (and Data Owner) to Data Domain Mapping

Phase breakdown

Phase 3: Strategies for Data Stewardship Success

• Establish a solid data governance foundation in your organization.
• Develop data stewardship onboarding: e.g. literacy and training, and frequently asked questions (FAQs).
• Gain support from data owners, the director general (DG) committee, data leadership, and executive leaders/champions.
• Set up rewards and recognition for the role.
• Establish a feedback loop/mechanism for data stewards so the stewardship program can be adjusted accordingly.
• Establish communication and create awareness of the role.

Establishing effective data stewardship

Leverage your organization's business SMEs to drive impactful data use and handling.

Unlock the value of data through people.

Data Steward Value Proposition
Clearly articulate the data stewardship value proposition. What's in it for the person, their line of business or mandate, and your organization as a whole.

Data Steward Role Design
Formally design and define the role of a data steward, including the functions and capabilities.

Strategies for Success
Set up your data stewards for success. Having a detailed role definition on paper is not enough. Ensure that you go the extra mile to deliver the relevant training, such as data stewardship onboarding and an awareness program.

Executive summary

Info-Tech Insight
Effective data governance requires a solid foundation. Data stewards provide the foundation for data governance. The time and effort to define this role properly will yield sound data governance return.

Phase 1: Data Stewardship Value Proposition

What is the VALUE of a DATA STEWARD?

Value of a Data Steward

Improved Data Quality Management

Clear and Consistent Data Definition

Increased Data Sharing and Collaboration

Ethical Handling of Data

Define the strategic value of data in your organization

Harness the value of data to power intelligent and transformative organizational performance.

Optimize the way you serve your stakeholders.

Respond to industry disruption.

Develop products and services to meet ever-evolving needs.

Manage operations and mitigate risk.

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

Data governance is:

• Executed according to agreed-upon models that describe who can take what actions with what information, when, and using what methods (CIO.com, 2021).
• True business-IT collaboration that leads to increased consistency and confidence in data to support decision making

If done correctly, data governance is not:

• An annoying, finger-waving roadblock in the way of getting things done
• An inhibitor or impediment to using and sharing data

Data governance is about putting guard rails in place to better support the use and handling of your organization's data.

Is there a clear definition of data accountability and responsibility in your organization?

Select a Security Outsourcing Partner

Outsource the right functions to secure your business.

Analyst Perspective

Understanding your security needs and remaining accountable is the key to selecting the right partner.

The need for specialized security services is fast becoming a necessity to most organizations. However, resource challenges will always mean that organizations will still have to take practical measures to ensure that the time, quality, and service that they require from outsourcing partners have been carefully crafted and packaged to elicit the right services that cover all their needs and requirements.

Organizations must ensure that security partners are aligned not only with their needs and requirements, but also with the corporate culture. Rather than introducing hindrances to daily operations, security partners must support business goals and protect the organization’s interests at all times.

And as always, outsource only your responsibilities and do not outsource your accountability, as that will cost you in the long run.

Danny Hammond
Research Analyst
Security, Risk, Privacy & Compliance Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Mitigate security risks by developing an end-to-end process that ensures you are outsourcing your responsibilities and not your accountability.

Your Challenge

This research is designed to help organizations select an effective security outsourcing partner.

• A security outsourcing partner is a third-party service provider that offers security services on a contractual basis depending on client needs and requirements.
• An effective outsourcing partner can help an organization improve its security posture by providing access to more specialized security experts, tools, and technologies.
• One of the main challenges with selecting a security outsourcing partner is finding a partner that is a good fit for the organization's unique security needs and requirements.
• Security outsourcing partners typically have access to sensitive information and systems, so proper controls and safeguards must be in place to protect all sensitive assets.
• Without careful evaluation and due diligence to ensure that the partner is a good fit for the organization's security needs and requirements, it can be challenging to select an outsourcing partner.

Outsourcing is effective, but only if done right

• 83% of decision makers with in-house cybersecurity teams are considering outsourcing to an MSP (Syntax, 2021).
• 77% of IT leaders said cyberattacks were more frequent (Syntax, 2021).
• 51% of businesses suffered a data breach caused by a third party (Ponemon, 2021).

Common Obstacles

The problem with selecting an outsourcing partner isn’t a lack of qualified partners, it’s the lack of clarity about an organization's specific security needs.

• Most organizations do not have a clear understanding of their current security posture, their security goals, and the specific security services they require. Without a clear understanding of their needs, organizations may struggle to identify a partner that can meet their requirements.
• Breakdowns and lack of communication can be a significant obstacle, especially when clear lines of communication with partners, including regular check-ins, reporting, and incident response protocols, have not been clearly established.
• Ensuring that security partner's systems and processes integrate seamlessly with existing systems can be a challenge for most organizations. This is in addition to making sure that security partners have the necessary access and permissions to perform their services effectively.
• Adhering to security policies is rarely a priority to users, as compliance often feels like an interference to daily workflow. For a lot of organizations, security policies are not having the desired effect.

Source: IBM, 2022 Cost of a Data Breach; N=537.

Info-Tech’s methodology for selecting a security outsourcing partner

Determine your responsibilities

Determine what responsibilities you can outsource to a service partner. Analyze which responsibilities you should outsource versus keep in-house? Do you require a service partner based on identified responsibilities?

Scope your requirements

Refine the list of role-based requirements, variables, and features you will require. Use a well-known list of critical security controls as a framework to determine these activities and send out RFPs to pick the best candidate for your organization.

Manage your outsourcing program

Adopt a program to manage your third-party service security outsourcing. Trust your managed security service providers (MSSP) but verify their results to ensure you get the service level you were promised.

Select a Security Outsourcing Partner

Blueprint benefits

Insight summary

Overarching insight: You can outsource your responsibilities but not your accountability.

Determine what to outsource: Assess your responsibilities to determine which ones you can outsource. It is vital that an understanding of how outsourcing will affect the organization, and what cost savings, if any, to expect from outsourcing is clear in order to generate a list of responsibilities that can/should be outsourced.

Select the right partner: Create a list of variables to evaluate the MSSPs and determine which features are important to you. Evaluate all potential MSSPs and determine which one is right for your organization

Manage your MSSP: Align the MSSP to your organization. Adopt a program to monitor the MSSP which includes a long-term strategy to manage the MSSP.

Identifying security needs and requirements = Effective outsourcing program: Understanding your own security needs and requirements is key. Ensure your RFP covers the entire scope of your requirements; work with your identified partner on updates and adaptation, where necessary; and always monitor alignment to business objectives.

Measure the value of this blueprint

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

Overall Impact: 8.9 /10

Overall Average Cost Saved: $22,950

Overall Average Days Saved: 9

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 keep 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.

Develop a Master Data Management Practice and Platform

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