Aligning With Business Customers Requires Strategy, Stakeholder Focus, And Metrics

Creating greater alignment with business customers is an incredibly hot objective for technology strategists and one that is supported by powerful long-term market trends. Our recent survey of strategy professionals found that 91% of respondents say that increasing their business focus is a strategic priority for their organizations over the next three years — beating out other hot topics in the technology industry such as innovation, investment in social emerging technologies, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity, and geographic expansion. Despite the strong interest, however, Forrester finds far too many technology companies see this objective as primarily a responsibility to be handled by marketing organizations. To prepare for the long-term evolution of the technology industry with the business, technology firms will need to take a much more robust approach — one that incorporates the needs of business customers into product development, strategy, marketing, and sales.