By Aaron Pearson, Executive Vice President, United States
It’s an exciting time to be in communications and supporting enterprise IT. From the Internet of Things to the Consumerization of IT to Big Data, there’s considerable disruption and innovation occurring. I’m one of the agency chairs for Constellation Research’s Supernova Awards, which celebrate that disruption. I thought it would be fun to assemble finalist entries for the Consumerization of IT and New C-Suite category into a Wordle and see what major themes surfaced this year.
Healthcare is one. The Affordable Care Act is accelerating the trend towards consumer-directed healthcare, requiring more of us to be smart consumers of healthcare products and services. Our system was never set up for that, but health insurers and large employers are using everything from mobile alerts to gamification to give consumers a hand. On the provider side, mobile devices are changing how work gets done. With electronic medical records (EMRs) more pervasive, care providers want to access that information anywhere and on any device. That requires creative solutions to protect patient privacy while enabling physicians to work more efficiently.
Internal collaboration and content communities (aka enterprise social media) remain hot topics too. Among the more interesting activity – the lines between internal and external collaboration networks are blurring, as vendors find they can use private social platforms to make it easier for customers to access staff and other customer expertise. Advances in search and analysis of unstructured (i.e. “big”) data add further incentive for everyone to get online, share insights, collaborate and innovate. Content is the fuel for internal communications as much as it drives external engagement.
I guess one could say you now have the Whole (Word) Picture of the Consumerization of IT.
Constellation Research has published the full line-up of finalist entries online for your perusal.
Disclosure: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is a finalist using the technology of my client, Change Healthcare.
