1、On The Precipice Of Far-Reaching Change PREDICTIONS 2020 2019 Forrester Research, Inc. FORR.COM/PREDICTIONS Reflecting on 2019 Forrester predicted that 2019 would be the year strategic vision converted to pragmatism. This was driven by the reality that bolder strategies depend on a stronger, more ad
2、aptive foundation a foundation that did not exist for most. Too many companies were saddled with technical and data debt, hampered by existing organizational silos, required to allocate more resources to the core tech stack, trying to understand a volatile competitive landscape, and struggling with
3、the execution of customer obsession. Those struggles manifested in plateaued CX performance, digital transformations that did not deliver the expected returns, and early efforts to capitalize on new technologies and models that took a technical, rather than operational, viability path. In 2019, many
4、 leaders took a step back and doubled down on the hard work of building a strategic, operational, and technical foundation able to adapt. They did this while steering the company to maximize customer, financial, and shareholder value. That strategy was prudent but not risk-free: Others that never ha
5、d to rebuild a foundation or were ahead of the game were able to allocate more resources to growth creating the risk of separation and playing a heavy game of catch-up in 2020. The larger risk may be market-based. While taking a step back to build foundation, those firms may have missed a closing wi
6、ndow of good economic times and deferred more aggressive strategies to an economic climate that is at best mixed and, at worst, recessionary. Upon reflection, we are looking at a time and place where foundational work is underway and companies both digitally native and traditional are better able to