Gartner Says Companies Must Implement a Pattern-Based Strategy to Increase Their Competitive Advantage

Analysts Discuss the Framework for Implementing a Pattern-Based Strategy During
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, October 18-22, in Orlando
STAMFORD, Conn.--(Business Wire)--
The economic environment rapidly emerging from the recession will force business
leaders to look at their opportunities for growth, competitive differentiation,
and cost controls in a new way. A Pattern-Based Strategy will help leaders
harness and drive change, rather than simply react to it, according to Gartner,
Inc.

A Pattern-Based Strategy provides a framework to proactively seek, model and
adapt to leading indicators, often-termed "weak" signals that form patterns in
the marketplace. Not only will leading organizations excel at identifying new
patterns and exploiting them for competitive advantage, but their own innovation
will create new patterns of change within the marketplace that will force others
to react.

"Most enterprises and governments today are so invested in traditional processes
and thinking that they can't hear or sense new signals," said Val Sribar, group
vice president of Research at Gartner. "Many are not even trying to identify
signals of change. If they are, they are unable to get executives to pay
attention, model the impact, or discuss how their organization must adapt. The
few organizations that are seeking and modeling new patterns continue to
struggle to get their people, processes and information to adapt in ways that
drive a measurable business outcome."

"It's not enough to just seek changes in social, economic, political and
environmental landscapes," said Yvonne Genovese, vice president and
distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Organizations need a way to evaluate what
they are hearing and act appropriately. They also need to seek patterns, not
just from information, but also in activities of people, such as the collective
on social media platforms."

Pattern-Based Strategy requires both existing and new technologies. There are
existing technologies that will continue to evolve - business intelligence,
rules-based engines, performance management, service-oriented architecture,
business process management, recommendation engines, etc. A Pattern-Based
Strategy will also require integration of these existing technologies and the
emergence of new or enhanced technologies: those that identify patterns of
change to indicate opportunity or risk, those that model the effects on the
enterprise and those that enable an organization to consistently adapt to these
patterns and drive measurable results.

A CONTINUOUS CYCLE: SEEK, MODEL AND ADAPT

Most business strategy approaches have long emphasized the need to seek better
information and insights to inform strategic decisions and the need for scenario
planning and robust organizational change management. Few have connected this
activity directly to the execution of successful business outcomes. According to
Gartner, successful organizations can achieve this by establishing the following
disciplines and proactively using technology to enable each of these activities:

Seeking in new ways and beyond traditional places - Business and IT leaders have
historically focused on information that exists within traditional,
well-structured sources - usually reinforcing what they already know and
validating their current strategic direction. But to ignore new patterns that
form from weak signals, or to misclassify stronger signals to fit within the
norms of a current business strategy, risks losing sight of exceptions that
provide valuable leading indicators of market changes.

"To get beyond the type of seeking they may have performed in the past,
organizations must break down traditional silos of information to proactively
seek signals across existing and emerging sources of information," said Mr.
Sribar. "This will enable business and IT leaders to identify, characterize and
assess patterns that both support and contradict existing strategy and
operations assumptions."

Modeling for pattern analysis - Once new patterns are detected or created,
business and IT leaders must use collaborative processes, such as scenario
planning, to discuss the potential significance, impact and timing of them on
the organization's strategy and business operations. The purpose of modeling is
to determine which patterns represent great potential or risk to the
organization by qualifying and quantifying the impact.

"Successful organizations will focus their pattern-seeking activities on areas
that are most important to their organization," said Ms. Genovese. "Using models
to do scenario planning will be critical to fact-based decisions and the
transparency of the result."

Adapting to capture the benefits - Identifying a pattern of change and
qualifying the potential impact are meaningless without the ability to adapt and
execute to a successful business outcome. Business and IT leaders must adapt
strategy, operations and their people's behaviors decisively to capture the
benefits of new patterns with a consistent and repeatable response that is
focused on results.

According to Mr. Sribar, the ways that Amazon and Netflix apply recommendation
engines are examples of organizations leveraging Pattern-Based Strategy
concepts. These companies seek new patterns in behavior as customers browse and
purchase. Amazon and Netflix evolve their customer models dynamically in order
to adapt promotions as the customer navigates through the site. In many cases,
this has led to increased revenue through cross-selling and upselling, as well
as higher customer loyalty. Most importantly, the results of various adaptations
are fed back into how recommendations seek new patterns and model potential
future adaptations.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report "Introducing
Pattern-Based Strategy." The report is available on Gartner's website at
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=g_search&id=1117912&subref=simplesearch.
The research explores the factors, approaches and technologies that can enable
business and IT leaders to implement a Pattern-Based Strategy.

Ms. Genovese and other analysts will host a number of sessions examining various
aspects of Pattern-Based Strategy at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, October 18-22, in
Orlando, Florida. A sample of some of these sessions focused on Pattern-Based
Strategy is available at
http://agendabuilder.gartner.com/sym19/webpages/SearchAgendaAndPrograms.aspx?searchText=pattern-based.

About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the industry's largest and most important annual
gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and
objective content with the authority and weight of the world's leading IT
research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions
from key technology providers. Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key
components of attendees' annual planning efforts. They rely on Gartner
Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organizations can use IT to
address business challenges and improve operational efficiency.

Members of the media can register for the event by contacting Christy Pettey at
christy.pettey@gartner.com.

Upcoming dates and locations for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo include:
October 18-22, Orlando, Florida: www.gartner.com/us/symposium
November 2-5, Cannes, France: www.gartner.com/eu/symposium
November 11-13, Tokyo, Japan: www.gartner.com/jp/symposium
November 17-19, Sydney Australia: www.gartner.com/au/symposium

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research
and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary
for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT
leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in
high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology
investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000
distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner
Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with
every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the
context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in
Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200
research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit
www.gartner.com.

Gartner
Christy Pettey, + 1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009