Technological evolution is a massive challenge for every business. The question is, when to invest? Ahead of the curve on emerging tech that just might offer a real business advantage? Or not until a major technology provider can offer you a proven solution “as a service”, which you can harness in ways that are differentiated from your competitors? Or somewhere in between?
Many business leaders feel damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
Key global trends
A recent CGI Global 1000 study confirmed what we have all decided ourselves — that consumers and citizens expect seamless and personal interaction with businesses and governments in the digital world. The study, based on face-to-face interviews with more than 1000 executives across 10 industries in 20 countries, highlighted five global industry trends:
- Over 70% of leaders cite the rising influence of consumers’ digital behaviours
- Security is starting to become a competitive differentiator for 62% of organisations
- Half of organisations across industries feel the burden of relentless regulatory demands
- One-third of executives note structural change of their business models is needed
- Nearly 30% of organisations are experiencing the emergence of IT as a driver of business change.
Business and technology leaders strongly articulated the need for fundamental business model change — now — given that industry value chains are shifting and customer expectations are rising for digital-first experiences. Central to the transformation opportunity ahead is the evolving role of technology. Traditionally viewed as an enabler, technology is now viewed by executives as a driver of change.
Impacts for business and technology
In a shift from previous years when the focus was on building a business case for change, this year the need to address cultural change was viewed as the critical gap to close in order to ensure successful digital transformation.
In banking, communications and retail and consumer services, end customers are helping to elevate emerging companies quickly, as they are leaving those too slow to change. They can help make or break a company through quick adoption of new digital technologies and by leveraging social media to review, rate and share their brand experiences.
Asset-intensive companies — whether delivering goods from one port to another, or ensuring the lights stay on – require huge investment and continued maintenance of complex technology, as well as physical infrastructures. Companies in these industries are challenged by how to reduce their over-burdened running costs to free up investment for change. They have begun by leveraging digital technologies that offer immediate cost savings such as robotics-based automation, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and mobile.
For risk-intensive and investment-intensive industries including oil and gas, government and healthcare, the urgency to transform is typically driven more by regulation and policies than directly by consumers or citizens, although this year’s study also highlighted the need to address new digital expectations.
How can companies stay on top of these challenges?
Across industries, governments and enterprises must take decisive, coordinated action to address these challenges. Leading organisations have assembled a digital transformation agenda, typically comprising the following objectives:
- Delivering on consumer demands to do more, faster to create a seamless, digital-first experience, harnessing the value of the Internet of Things
- Staying in step with relentless regulatory pressure and evolving data and privacy legislation
- Moving to integrate cybersecurity into customer value propositions, and strengthening the cyber-resiliency of soft and hard infrastructures to combat the ever-present threat of brand and business damage through data loss or privacy breaches
- Reducing operational costs through real-time processing and self-serve technologies, which require complex back-end systems integration and greater reliance on automation
- Leveraging advanced data analytics to drive insights for operational excellence, drive customer experience improvements and generate new revenue streams
- Developing, hiring and retaining talent with new digital skills, building capability and driving the shift to a digital-first culture.
There is no doubt, making headway in this evolving maelstrom of business and technology transformation is tough. However, failure to act will only make tomorrow’s task more insurmountable. Better to enter the digital stadium now, daring greatly for the triumph of high achievement, even if we should fail, rather than be with those cold and timid souls watching their old business models suffer a slow but inevitable defeat.
