The evolution of the Information Society is affecting businesses around the world—public and private, large and small, B2B and B2C. It’s demanding more from them, but it’s also offering rewards in return including increased productivity and better results.
Keep reading to find out our thoughts on what the Digital Transformation has in store for your business:
1. The Right Tools Will Play a Pivotal Role
To respond to the changes brought on by the IoT and the Information Society, businesses need to be agile. That means choosing hardware and software that will be dynamic, flexible, and able to meet the demands of your organization as it evolves.
Explore alternatives like the cloud. In a Harvard Business Review survey, cloud computing generated a wealth of excitement among respondents. The main benefits cited were flexible capacity (53%), business agility (50%), and lower costs (43%).
2. Superior Support is Critical in Facilitating Your Success
Ongoing support for your applications—regular maintenance, upgrades, and bug fixes—will help maximize performance, reliability, and security while minimizing risks. ZK Research put the financial hit associated with downtime and failures as high as $5.2 million per hour for brokerage firms.
To be sure you have the appropriate level of support in your corner, consider:
- Aligning internal skills with future needs, preparing yourself to fill the gaps you identify.
- Understanding what level of risk you can tolerate and making sure service agreements are suitable.
- Selecting the right vendor based on the level of support they can offer now and into the future.
Getting the right support structures in place early will help enable growth down the road.
3. Big Data Will Deliver Better Experiences
Big data tools allow businesses to analyze large quantities of information to better understand what customers and employees really want from the products and services they buy and use.
But big data can be challenging to acquire and manage. Gathering and studying it takes time, effort, and can require businesses to alter internal processes, resource allocation, and more. Regardless, 70% of those surveyed by the Harvard Business Review said they expect big data to influence the choices their organizations make in the coming years. The payoffs for those who learn how to interpret and integrate it into their day-to-day activities and large-scale plans can be significant, helping to transform the businesses of today into the success stories of tomorrow.
4. Involving Your Entire Company Is the Key to Success
To prosper in the era of the IoT, you need to have the right tools and people on your side:
- Nurture the Right Teams: The key is to isolate the types of skills your workforce will need and find ways to develop them, whether someone is a new hire or a veteran member of your staff.
- Reimagine Executives: More and more, executives are being tasked with driving change for their organizations. The two roles most significantly affected so far according to the Harvard Business Review’s study have been the Chief Technology Officer (55% of respondents said that role has changed) and Chief Operating Officer (34% said that role has changed).
Don’t forget that these transitions might sometimes be discomforting for employees. IT teams previously responsible for crimping cables and stacking servers, for example, will now need to see themselves as system integrators and might even need to write the scripts that will enable robots to carry out some of the functions previously assigned to them.
Make sure your teams know and feel that they’re part of the change. Encourage workers to think outside of the box by establishing innovation labs, creating collaboration-focused office spaces, and embracing new technologies.
Deploying integrated solutions—a broad suite of tools, ongoing support, big data analytics and insights, and an enthused and prepared workforce—will help make your organization’s digital transformation a winning one.
Are you ready to take the plunge? Contact us today to learn how Activo can help you maximize your success in the IoT!
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