Question

Give a brief overview of the article and highlight two key-takeaways you see important for your future career in a digital business (note: these can be discipline specific).

You can use a professional article (e.g. gartner.com, forbes.com, blog.linkedin.com) or an academic article (e.g. Google Scholar）

Please give some references with harvard styles.

Answer 1

Gartner highlighted the top strategic technology trends that organizations need to explore in upcomoing stages. Analysts presented their findings during Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, which has take place.

Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with substantial disruptive potential that is beginning to break out of an emerging state into broader impact and use, or which is rapidly growing with a high degree of volatility reaching tipping points over the next five years. Digital business is generally perceived from the perspective of firms that are heavily invested in old conditions and whose typical or planned course of development is interrupted. As the proliferation of certain digital processes or artefacts leads to change in established industry structures, established firms face severe pressure to respond. Such responses can prompt fundamental change to operations and the technologies that support legacy business models

In a market environment characterized by “lightning strike” crises, polarized consumers and eroded trust in institutions, marketers need to sharpen their strategy and execution practices to compete effectively. Gartner Digital Marketing Conference 2018 offered marketing leaders insights and best practices for navigating this new wilderness of disruption.

Bringing together expert analysis, data-driven benchmarks and peer-proven best practices from Gartner L2, Iconoculture, CEB and Gartner, the 2018 event delivered specific support to move from vision to strategy and execution.

Take-away No. 1: Elevate how you implement marketing strategy

VP Analyst Ewan McIntyre and Anna Maria Virzi, Principal Analyst, mapped out the key findings from key Gartner Strategy and Spend surveys and encouraged marketers to address specific capability gaps in marketing skills, technology and multichannel efforts. For example, 74% of marketers rate customer insights as very important, yet only 57% report that customer insight capabilities exceed expectations. Closing those gaps will help marketing leaders improve the execution and implementation of their strategies to ultimately deliver the results executives expect. Look at the top five areas of your marketing spend and think about how they align to and support your business goals.

Take-away No. 2: Have a plan for the platform titans

Data drives the modern marketing organization, and four platform titans (Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook) control a lion’s share of consumer data. Distinguished VP Analyst Andrew Frank outlined tactics to maximize interactions with, and competition between, these four firms. Collaborate more to get first- and second-party data.

Take-away No. 3: Prepare to market in the era of fake news

Brands need to prepare for a current and future reality dominated by the rolling thunder of fake news, attack tweets and highly polarized market environments. Gartner VP Analyst Jay Wilson detailed the five themes that define the fake news era with lack of a common fact base, virality, audience polarization, new brand enemies and lack of trust. Richard Edelman, CEO of PR firm Edelman, rallied marketers to lead by example.

Take-away No. 4: Take your data and digital business capabilities to the next level

Although experienced data and analytics talent is hard to come by and a critical part of marketing success, expensive analytics talent is misaligned. Senior Director Analyst, shared key findings from the 2018 Gartner Marketing Analytics Survey, which found that nearly half of marketing leaders surveyed said some of their most expensive and experienced analysts spend their time preparing data to be analyzed rather than analyzing the data.  Rethink your allocation of resources. Leaders need to question if they need so much dedicated in-house analytics staff.