IDG Contributor Network: 4 strategic themes for digital transformation in 2018

Last year, my predictions for digital transformation were focused on the core DNA that organizations needed to put into place to achieve world-leading performance and results in digital transformation. In addition to perennial themes such as leadership, people and cultural competencies, these new strategic themes for digital transformation included disruptive technologies, platform business models, digital…

How to assemble a highly effective analytics team

Effective data analytics can be a competitive differentiator today, giving companies keen insights into customer preferences, product development and usage trends, and market gyrations that others don’t see. To get the most out of their analytics efforts, businesses need to assemble a highly talented team to make sense of all the data that’s coming in…

How to kill a dead project

What do the zombie apocalypse and many businesses have in common? Answer: dead things that refuse to lie down and be still. The dead, brain-eating things businesses have a hard time killing are shambling, resource-eating projects. You know the ones. They’re projects where the meetings continue, team members still charge their time, but not only…

MetLife renovates legacy IT for the cloud era

Many enterprises have embraced cloud computing to fuel digital transformations, launching initiatives that range from new mobile applications to analytics for gleaning insights from customers. Yet due to concerns about security, regulations and data governance, enterprise adoption of public cloud services remains less than 50 percent and won’t cross that mark until 2018, according to…

4 business applications for natural language processing

You may not realize it but natural language processing (NLP) is more than an emerging technology for business — it’s a popular technology widely used every day. Online search, spell-check —  almost any feature that involves language incorporates natural language processing algorithms. NLP algorithms teach computers to use language like people. If you were manually…

Blockchain pilots show big-business promise

Blockchain, the complex technology that supports bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, is poised for a move into mainstream business. A growing number of industries and at least three national governments are conducting pilots or, in a few cases, actual deployments of blockchain applications. Early use cases are aimed at harnessing the technology to improve supply chain…