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Translating Advantages of Emerging Technology into Tangible Business Strategy

By Michael L Capone   |   Wednesday, 11 Dec 2013, 16:40 IST

The market is currently being bombarded with trends namely Mobile, social,analytics and the like. At this point it is seen that consumerism has dominated the industry space and has become the prime pivot with clients expecting do to business the same way, whether it is B2B or B2C. Clients expect an enriching user experience on the device of their choice and they expect applications to exhibit predictive behavior to anticipate their needs. A great example is recruiting.A recent research by Simply Hired showed that 70 percent of candidates search for jobs on mobile devices.Only seven percent of businesses have their career sites optimized for mobile to accommodate these jobseekers.This is a huge disconnect that we are working to help companies address through advanced recruiting platforms with robust mobile/social capabilities.

Bridging the Gap Amidst Challenges
Current vendors, with their current solutions need to bridge the gap between enterprise and consumer where enterprise standards around technology, devices and security have not kept pace with the changing world.There has been notable progress over the last year or so, and is expected to continue. But until the line is completely erased, there will be some pent up frustration. Our mobile app for our clients’ employees to perform HR functions, such as viewing pay statements and benefits and entering time, has seen rapid adoption. We are closing in on 1.5 million users.This shows that the marketplace is more than ready and we need to keep delivering those kinds of solutions.

Evolving Identities
It is all about velocity. Because of the need to deliver solutions at a constant pace, CIOs have to keep up with market demand and technology,which is a full time job. Also, CIOs today are expected to not just enable business strategy but to actually drive it. Translating the advantages of emerging technology into tangible business strategy is where time is mostly spent.

In translating these advantages and also pushing for efficiency, CIOs face the daunting task of keeping up with the velocity of change, particularly as it related to the rise of consumer technologies in the workplace. Other issues like developing effective strategies around big data and analytics crawl up as well. Data is clearly the currency of the future and those who use data best are going to win. This forces new alliances within the organization like the much written about CIO/CMO partnership. Also not to mention as always, winning the war for talent to ensure the procurement of the right mix of skills and creative thinking to continue to deliver market leading solutions is an unending task.

Going against the Tides
Despite issues that CIOs face; we are not deterred in leveraging a number of different things to drive innovation within the organization.We have become huge believers in crowdsourcing and now run multiple crowdsourcing events simultaneously to drive new, innovative ideas. There is no doubt that the best ideas come from the bottom up whether it is associates or clients. Social is also an incredibly powerful tool. Our last event generated over 300 ideas. However, we never build a new technology just because we think it’s a good idea. We always request feedback from the people who will actually use the product—clients and prospective clients—to make sure what we deliver are useful and effective.

It is also important to encourage teams to think about how something will be used which may seem counterintuitive, but it is incredibly challenging to build a product that is simple and easy to use. Particularly with the kind of platforms we develop, people will not judge based on graphics and features. They will judge our product based on how quickly they can learn to use and rely on it. We took a deliberately minimalist approach with our mobile app, and it has been a tremendous success. Apart from innovation with respect to the organization, my Fitbit is a great example of innovation. I am a big believer in healthy body and healthy mind. In the high-demand world of travel and meetings, it is good to have the little device in my pocket to ensure I do not neglect my fitness regimen.

About Author

Michael L Capone
Corporate Vice President of Product Development & CIO
ADP

Headquartered in Roseland, NJ, ADP (NASDAQ: ADP) is a provider of human capital management solutions for human resource, payroll, talent management, tax and benefits administration solutions from a single source.Founded in 1949, the company has a market cap of $36.43 billion.