In an era where technology and marketing are more closely intertwined than ever, insights from Forrester’s APAC Technology & Innovation Summit reveal how high-performance tech strategies can drive sustainable growth. In this insightful recap, Nitika Shah, Senior Product Manager from Datacom distills the event’s key takeaways—ranging from the foundational pillars of high-performance tech to frameworks that align digital investments with customer-centric outcomes. Continue reading to learn more from her expereince.
At Forrester’s recent Technology & Innovation Summit in APAC, leaders across technology, marketing, and business came together to explore how innovative tech strategies can drive real, strategic value. The event provided actionable frameworks and fresh perspectives on how technology is shaping the future of business – and why it’s a game-changer for marketing leaders.
For those of us working at the intersection of tech, marketing, and customer experience, the summit wasn’t just theoretical. It delivered a roadmap for aligning technology investments with broader business and customer goals. Below, I’ve distilled key takeaways that demonstrate how the right tech strategy can unlock innovation, elevate customer satisfaction, and lay the foundation for scalable growth.
The three pillars of high-performance tech: trust, alignment, and adaptability
Sam Higgins, Principal Analyst at Forrester, outlined three pillars that drive high-performance technology initiatives. These aren’t just buzzwords – they’re the building blocks for leveraging tech as a strategic asset:
- Trust: High-performing tech teams deliver consistent, predictable results. This builds confidence across the organisation, positioning tech as a trusted partner that drives business value. For marketers, trust in tech means reliable platforms and tools that support seamless campaign execution and data-driven decision-making.
- Alignment: In today’s fast-paced market, siloed marketing and tech teams simply don’t work. Cross-functional collaboration ensures that tech investments align with strategic goals, enabling marketing campaigns to adapt quickly to technological advancements while remaining customer-focused.
- Adaptability: With the pace of change accelerating, adaptability is critical. Agile tech strategies empower marketing teams to pivot quickly in response to shifting customer expectations or market dynamics, creating a competitive edge.
These pillars illustrate that high-performance tech strategies are not one-size-fits-all. They require flexibility, collaboration, and a commitment to aligning innovation with business priorities.
The four tech styles: tailoring innovation to your business needs
Forrester’s Technology Styles Framework offers a powerful lens for understanding how technology can support different business goals. Each style reflects a unique approach to balancing speed and scale, helping marketers identify how tech capabilities align with campaign needs and customer engagement strategies:
- Enabling (low speed, low scale): This is about keeping the basics running smoothly – protecting core operations and ensuring tech is stable. From a marketing perspective, this style is foundational. It enables the back-end efficiency needed to scale while protecting your brand’s integrity. It ensures that systems for customer data and campaign execution are reliable and secure.
- Co-creating (high speed, low scale): Here the focus is on innovation and product development, with an emphasis on rapid collaboration across teams. For marketers, this means agile technology that supports fast-paced campaigns and customer experiences, helping you stay ahead of the curve in a competitive landscape. It allows marketing teams to iterate on new content, campaigns, and offers quickly, responding to market trends in real-time.
- Amplifying (low speed, high scale): This style focuses on optimising tech at scale – building systems that improve efficiency and repeatability. For marketing, it translates into the ability to scale campaigns across multiple channels, all while ensuring consistency and impact. With the right infrastructure, marketers can execute large-scale campaigns, track results, and optimise them at speed.
- Transforming (high speed, high scale): At the cutting edge, this style leverages emerging technologies like AI, edge computing, and advanced architecture. For product marketers, this is about harnessing next-gen technology to elevate your product and customer experience, delivering exponential value. Imagine using AI to predict customer needs, personalising product recommendations, or enhancing customer service through automation – all of which enable a more tailored and scalable customer experience.
By understanding these styles, marketing leaders can partner with their tech teams to ensure investments are tailored to business priorities and customer demands.
Aligning tech metrics with customer outcomes
Forrester’s CX Measurement Framework, introduced by Senior Analyst Zhi-Ying Barry, highlights the importance of connecting tech performance with customer-centric metrics. In an experience-driven economy, marketing and tech must collaborate to deliver value at three levels:
- Relationship level: Customers’ perception of your brand overall.
- Journey level: The seamlessness of customer interactions across touchpoints.
- Touchpoint level: Specific moments that matter most to customers.
For marketing leaders, these insights are invaluable for measuring how technology impacts the customer experience—from initial awareness to loyalty.
Bridging tech and business value with modern innovation metrics
Barry also introduced the Modern Application Development Metrics Framework, linking tech innovation directly to business outcomes. For product marketers, these metrics – such as quality, engagement, and efficiency – help demonstrate the tangible value of tech investments.
The framework includes:
- Business value: Metrics like revenue, customer satisfaction, and onboarding.
- Progress: Tracking milestones such as rework and pull requests.
- Quality: Metrics that evaluate product quality, such as defect rates.
- Engagement: How engaged your developers and customers are with the product.
- Efficiency: Speed, productivity, and resource use.
When paired with traditional marketing KPIs like customer acquisition and retention, this framework ensures that both teams are aligned on driving measurable outcomes.
Embracing the future of adaptive tech
Emerging technologies like AI, generative agents, and digital twins are reshaping the landscape. The summit emphasised that marketing leaders must stay ahead by continuously exploring how innovation can enhance customer engagement and streamline experiences.
In this era of adaptive technology, success requires rethinking how marketing and tech teams collaborate. By embracing agility and focusing on innovation, organisations can create personalised, seamless customer journeys at scale.
Culture and customer-centric Innovation
Finally, Forrester highlighted that culture is the bedrock of high-performance technology. Diversity and inclusion – whether in advisory boards or internal teams – are critical for fostering innovation. As Jinan Budge succinctly put it, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast, even in the age of AI.”
For marketers, this means creating experiences that reflect your customers’ diverse values and needs, driving innovation through inclusivity. Marketing leaders must align their messaging, product offerings, and campaigns with the growing demand for diversity and inclusivity from both customers and employees.
Key takeaways for marketing and technology leaders
For those working at the crossroads of marketing, technology, and customer experience, these insights are critical:
- Leverage proven frameworks: Tools like the Tech Styles Framework and CX Measurement Framework can help ensure that tech investments are aligned with customer and business goals.
- Focus on outcomes, not outputs: Align tech and marketing efforts around metrics that drive real business impact, from customer satisfaction to revenue growth.
- Stay adaptable: In a world of constant change, adaptability is non-negotiable. Revisit your strategies often – stagnant plans won’t cut it in today’s fast-moving landscape, where reprioritisation and rebalancing are key to ensuring you’re still on the right track to achieve the right goals.
As someone leading product marketing, customer research, and sales enablement for SaaS products at Datacom, these insights deeply resonate. They emphasise the need for cross-functional collaboration, a customer-first approach, and an organisational culture that prioritises innovation.
The Forrester Summit underscored an essential truth: high-performance tech is a journey. By focusing on trust, adaptability, and alignment, marketing and innovation leaders can harness the power of technology to fuel growth and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Source: Nitika Shah, 8 December, 2024