The four stages on which essential activities in the successful deployment of advanced technology are based. They are:

• Specification — which aligns corporate strategy and technology focus

• Tracking — which assesses individual technologies for maturity and business impact

• Evaluation — which involves prototyping and other in-depth evaluation activities to further gauge the readiness and relevance of the technology

• Production — which sees the technology being piloted and, if successful, rolled out into full deployment.