Welcome to The Systematic Summary, Systematic’s new weekly roundup of the news, books, and interviews that will make you a more informed business technology professional. Every week, I’ll be bringing together the best media for IT and BT leaders to consume in one, easy-to-digest list. Let’s get started.
Catch up on this week’s news:
While it can be hard to make the business case for adopting AI, Gartner outlines six things to consider when pushing for AI technology for your organization.
From communicating clearly with stakeholders about the potential ROI of AI adoption to developing hiring best practices for those who will be working on it, building a business case for adopting this new technology will be essential to winning over your team. Moutusi Sau, a research VP on the CIO Financial Services Research and Advisory team at Gartner, delves into the complex considerations and potential benefits of being an early user.
CIO compiled a list of the 10 most misused buzzwords in IT.
IT is a jargon-heavy industry, and one that is rapidly evolving. For this reason, confusion surrounding the definition of certain terms is inevitable, as is the potential for leaders to adopt buzzwords and use them to win over their peers or a board. “Digital transformation” is one of the latter. “Digital solutions do not magically transform the business…a fool with a tool is still a fool,” Mark Bilger, CIO of One Call, told CIO. Other commonly misused words include DevOps, machine learning, and 5G, among others.
Slack streamlined their lead to cash process by building powerful bots.
Monica Wilkinson, Slack’s Lead Architect and Staff Application Engineer, outlines how her team leveraged user feedback and bottom-up ideation to save their sales team time. Although her team had already created useful bots to speed up the deal approval and contract creation processes, they took on the new challenge of helping the sales team prioritize their efforts through a bot that highlights prospects with the highest potential.
Systematic found that the most important things BT professionals look for in a company are strong and visionary leadership, a flexible and innovative work culture, and room for growth.
Mary Hodges, Systematic’s community manager, did a deep dive into the things BT professionals are looking for in a company. Here’s a hint about what she found: There’s a major emphasis on a strong company culture. Research by specialist recruitment firm Hays found that 47% of people looking for a new job cite company culture as the main reason for their current dissatisfaction.
Cybersecurity Meg took to Twitter to ask an important question: “If you could give one piece of advice to those trying to break into the cybersecurity field—what would you say?”
The resulting thread was filled with resources like CyberWire’s daily podcast, an info security online community, and nuggets of wisdom from industry experts like Richard Bejtlich, Author in Residence at Corelight. Bejtlich’s recommendation? Read. “And because that’s so short, also ‘do security’ wherever you are. Everyone has some digital assets to defend, whether their own or their employer’s, or school’s, etc., whether they are formally working in security or not.”
Find some weekend reading:
2020 Xfinity Cyber Health Report (2020)
Comcast
Xfinity’s 2020 Cyber Health Report offers unique insights into the challenges of securing a hyper-connected home.
Facebook is a Doomsday Machine (2020)
Adrienne LaFrance
Following Mark Zuckerberg’s words with Apple this week, dive into this feature by The Atlantic’s executive editor to learn more about the giants of the social web and how algorithms can lead to manipulation.
Learn from the experts:
Cathy Southwick, CIO at Pure Storage, speaks with Mark Settle about the similarities and differences between IT management within a $200B Fortune50 company versus a $2B tech firm.
HGS Chief Digital Officer Virgil Wong discusses empathy and upgrades on IT Visionaries, giving his unique perspective on using automation to drive a more personalized CX.
Feedback for The Systematic Summary: If there is something you’d like to see in next week’s roundup, email me at [email protected] with the subject line “The Systematic Summary.”
