Joseph Sweeney
Dr. Joseph Sweeney is an IBRS advisor specialising in the areas of workforce transformation and the future of work, including; workplace strategies, end-user computing, collaboration, workflow and low code development, data-driven strategies, policy, and organisational cultural change. He is the author of IBRS’s Digital Workspaces methodology. Dr Sweeney has a particular focus on Microsoft, Google, AWS, VMWare, and Citrix. He often assists organisations in rationalising their licensing spend while increasing workforce engagement. He is also deeply engaged in the education sector. Joseph was awarded the University of Newcastle Medal in 2007 for his studies in Education, and his doctorate, granted in 2015, was based on research into Australia’s educational ICT policies for student device deployments.
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- IT Operational Excellence
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27 March 2019
- Strategy & Transformation
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15 March 2019
Conclusion: Media played up the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Transformation in 2018. However, the potential AI remains underestimated and its limitations misunderstood. In short, AI is reaching peak hype with investments sporadic and confused. In contrast, Digital Transformation remains a primary driver for investment, though it means very different things to different organisations and even different stakeholders within organisations.
Australia’s CIOs remain focused on tactical issues: upgrades of core systems, adoption of hybrid Cloud (as opposed to simply Cloud migration, which was a dominant theme in early 2018) and changing the culture and structure of the ICT group to support “as-a-Service” operational models entity
It is important to note that these tactical priorities of CIOs all have one thing in common: they are aimed at providing a technological infrastructure for the organisation to adopt “Digital Transformation”. In this sense, Digital Transformation is being used as a way to secure agreement and investment in more fluid, responsive and modern tech infrastructure and operations, rather than a specific, measurable business outcome.
In 2019, Digital Transformation is a rallying call, more than a discrete program of work with measurable outcomes. This rallying call will be heard by all stakeholders, but interpreted differently. The challenge for senior ICT executives will be to leverage the short opportunity the Digital Transformation call has to deliver genuine long-term benefits and update infrastructure and operating models to be more flexible and responsive to changing business needs.
- Strategy & Transformation
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05 March 2019
- IT Operational Excellence
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28 January 2019
Conclusion: Increasingly, IT departments are looking for ways to divest their operations of undifferentiated activities – that is, activities that are common among most organisations. One technology that is ubiquitous across every organisation, in every vertical sector, is end-user computing. Theoretically, it should be an easy area of IT to be deployed via a fully managed service. In reality, IBRS has seen more failures in the space than successes.
The reasons why fully managed (aka “as-a-Service”) end-user computing initiatives fail is a result of the initial rationale for the go-to-market strategy and the resulting request for proposal (RFP).
- IT Operational Excellence
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07 January 2019
- IT Operational Excellence
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26 December 2018
Conclusion: As self-service data analytics and visualisation becomes mainstream – due in no small part to Microsoft’s Power BI strategy – traditional data teams within IT groups need to reconsider traditional business intelligence architectures and plan a migration to a new environment. Underpinning the new architecture must be a sharper focus on tools and practices to support data governance, which is not a strength of Microsoft’s portfolio.
- Strategy & Transformation
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03 December 2018
- IT Operational Excellence
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30 November 2018
Conclusion: Microsoft’s portfolio of business intelligence (BI) products now places the vendor in a market-leading position. Over the next three to five years, IBRS expects Microsoft to continue to strengthen its market position in BI, largely through its ability to expose a large number of users to self-service data visualisation and storytelling via some of Power BI’s features being included in Office 365.
Exploring Microsoft’s strategy for Power BI provides several important issues for consideration.
- Strategy & Transformation
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03 November 2018
- IT Operational Excellence
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24 October 2018
- IT Operational Excellence
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15 October 2018
Conclusion: Since CRM modernisation will impact many major functional areas of the organisation, developing a communication plan to ensure the strategy is developed and executed in a consistent and well-supported manner will involve many different roles and responsibilities. Gone are the days when the CRM was primarily the domain of sales and the IT departments.
- Strategy & Transformation
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05 October 2018
- IT Operational Excellence
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25 September 2018
Conclusion: The availability of modern, Cloud-based, omnichannel-focused stakeholder and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions is disrupting customer expectations. It is not just that new CRM solutions have additional features and modules when compared to more traditional CRM solutions with a history predating social media. The modern CRM paradigm is focused on automation and mass personalisation of customer experiences rather than stakeholder and sales management.
A CRM modernisation effort must, therefore, be based upon a firm understanding of the organisation’s most valuable customer experiences. One way to achieve this understanding is to develop a customer experience strategy.
Note: sister note on this topic for public sector organisations is available.
- Strategy & Transformation
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05 September 2018
