When an industrial giant like GE starts to move all your health data into the cloud using their new Predix cloud offering, you sit up and take notice. It’s clear that “digital” has gone well beyond Facebook and Google+. What does this mean for the enterprise?
The consumerization of IT means many of us have been acting and interacting in more digitally sophisticated ways at home and in our social circles than we do at work. In fact, in some cases, enterprise computing has lagged behind personal computing when it comes to the digital revolution. No doubt the scale of any decision to “go digital” is fed by considerable investment apprehension. Many large enterprises believe they can’t possibly act quickly enough to keep up with the steady march of new innovations emerging in the marketplace. This hesitation often translates into lots of talk about technology with little action. Especially when decisions about technology involve a radical change to a company’s way of doing business.
Instead of asking “What are digital technologies?” and “What does digital transformation mean?” enterprises need to be asking “How can we use advances in technology to create sustainable and market-disrupting value?” Making sense of the dizzying rate of technological change is a matter of looking at it through your own, familiar and trusted business perspective.
In a new white paper, Avoiding the Siren Song of Technology: Focusing your Digital Strategy on Business Outcomes, I explore the ways leading enterprises are taking advantage of emerging technologies and as-a-service solutions to build a “digital fabric” to connect with and influence their customers, employees, partners and providers. By building a digital fabric, organizations can create new digital value in four distinct areas:
- Digital customer experience
- Digital products and services
- Digital supply chain and manufacturing
- Digital enablement and productivity.
Enterprises should only invest in the opportunities that are right for them and on which they can capitalize over the long term. Understanding both the industry and the enterprise-specific market potential of these areas will help individual companies identify the initiatives that lead to the most promising solutions for their unique business objectives. Those that have been successful at traversing this new ground have been so, at least in part, because they have built healthy relationships with partners that bring market insight or help to build capabilities that are designed specifically for their sustained growth.
Read this ISG white paper or contact me directly to discuss further.
About the author
Prashant works with enterprises to shape their operating models for a digital journey and brings 20 years of expertise in all aspects of applications and platforms, from designing transformations through the whole sourcing lifecycle. Prashant’s experience spans a range of industries, including Financial Services, Telecom and Media, Automotive and Utilities, and a range of geographies, including Europe, the Americas and India. Recently, he helped a Fortune 100 automotive giant consolidate its next-generation sourcing for applications, executing digital transformations right up to application management.
About the author
